


Gray

by Queen Kordeilia (QueenKordeilia)



Category: The Dumping Ground
Genre: Absent Parents, Child Abandonment, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Minor Character Death, Parent-Child Relationship, Ryan is a complete bitch, Sort of Canon Divergence from S6E2, Spoilers for anything up to S7E12
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2019-11-28 17:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 51
Words: 149,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18211559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenKordeilia/pseuds/Queen%20Kordeilia
Summary: Jody has a shot at a new family. Will she take it?





	1. Chapter 1

Two weeks. Two whole weeks and all she had to show for Christmas, besides what her friends had given her, was one measly Christmas card half wishing her a Merry Christmas and half asking her for money. She snorted. Out of her four immediate family members, Kingsley of all people had been the one to remember her existence, if only to practically beg for a couple of tenners. That was sad, even by DG standards.

Jody looked down at her mobile phone, her finger hovering over her other brother's contact number.  _Luke_. She hadn't heard from him since her fourteenth birthday, the one that her mother had completely forgotten. Kingsley forgetting was no surprise but her mother's neglect of her—her so-called little girl—struck her deep in the heart, much deeper than she'd ever expected. Still, she had Luke, or so she'd thought. Although Luke had been the one constant link to her family throughout the last six years, even he no longer had no time for her.

Sighing, Jody threw her mobile aside and watched it land on her bed with a soft thud. She wouldn't call Luke. She wouldn't go out of her way for yet another brother who didn't love her. Her nose tingled, signalling the oncoming onslaught of tears that threatened to overwhelm her, and it took all she had not to scream. She had to stop being so pathetic. Why was she surprised? This was all down to bad blood, that bad Jackson blood that ran through all of their veins, courtesy of their mother. It was only a matter of time before Luke proved that he was of that blood. Sometimes, even she succumbed to the pull of _that_  blood.

Something was amiss, though. Luke wasn't that bad. Even though he was Denise Jackson's son, like Kingsley, and had participated in both the assault on their former neighbours and her abandonment back when she was eight, Jody just couldn't believe that he'd stop talking to her for no reason. He'd kept in contact with her throughout his college years and his first two years at uni so why cut her off now? No... Mum was to blame for this. She had to be. She'd said something to Luke, perhaps ordered him to ignore his little sister on pain of disownment.

There was only one way to know for sure...

.:. QK .:.

Swimming. That was her brilliant excuse for borrowing Tyler's money for the bus to her mother's current residence, a house she'd never visited before; after Luke moved out, Mum had decided to downsize to a two-bedroom house and had never cared to invite Jody round. In fact, Jody only knew where her mother lived because Kingsley had told her just before he was released from his first stint in prison, mere months before he returned to prison for burgling the very same house. If there was one thing their mother had learnt since Jody and Luke testified against Kingsley, it was that her eldest son had to pay for his crimes; she testified against him herself this time around.

Getting off the bus at the stop nearest to the house, Jody carefully scoped her surroundings before walking towards the correct door—number twenty-three. One could never be too careful, especially when they lived with a creepy spy like Ryan. For all she knew, he could've been hiding behind a bush, filming her meeting her mother outside of contact so that he could use it to blackmail her later. She couldn't even recall her last contact meeting. It was as if Mum had given her up for closed adoption to Mike and May-Li.

Just as she was about to push open the small red gate blocking the path to the door, the front door of the house opened and out stepped an old man. Jody backed away, quickly hiding behind the bushes next to the gate as the man called out a few indistinct words behind him before opening the gate. She heard her mother call something back and had no time to hide as the man walked past her to get to his car, smiling warmly at her as he did so. She couldn't help but stare at him for a bit before looking away. This man wasn't only old but he was ancient, about the same age as Mum.

 _Mum_. Jody peered around the bush to see her mother leaning against the doorway, waving  _coyly_  at the man as he drove past the house. Her initial confusion gave way to irritation as she realised what was going on here. Clearly, her mother didn't need her anymore now that she had a new man. How long had this been going on for? A year? Two years? After Mum got out of prison? Or... before? She'd never seen Mum with a man before, especially not this one, and had never known her to be in a relationship with anyone other than the loser who'd walked out on them before Jody could even walk. When Mum couldn't even look after her own daughter, why was she dating? Suddenly, Jody didn't want to see her mother anymore.

Clenching her fists, she was just about ready to storm off when her mother spotted her. The older woman's smile vanished within a split second, leaving her looking like a deer caught in headlights, and Jody had to wonder if her mother appeared as such because she'd just remembered that she had a daughter. She shook her head, walking off in the direction her mother's new (?) man had gone.

"Jody! Jody, come back!"

Her mother's pleas fell on deaf ears.

.:. QK .:.

"Aren't you going to get that?"

Jody looked up at Ryan as her phone rang for what felt like the millionth time. "No," she answered, scowling as she failed to pot the pink snooker ball. Ryan smirked at her, forcing her to step out of the way as he prepared to take the next shot.

"Is it Tyler?" Candi-Rose singsonged in her highly annoying voice. Although she had no proof, Jody was fairly certain that Candi-Rose was teasing her. Damn that stupid magazine quiz! It'd been almost a year since she'd taken it but she hadn't forgotten the result and, evidently, neither had her pink-clad housemate.

"No," Jody repeated, watching as Ryan potted the ball she'd had her eye on earlier. She didn't have to check her phone to know who it was and not just because she had specific ringtones set for certain people. Her mother had been calling her again and again for days and though she was initially uninterested, her resolve was starting to break; her mother's desperation gave her a somewhat sick sense of self-validation. Was this how Ryan felt when he bullied and manipulated others? If so, she could see the appeal even though she knew it was totally wrong.

"It's not the right ringtone," Ryan told his sister's best friend.

"How— _why_ do you even know that?" Jody asked, leaning against the snooker stick she was using, her voice dripping with disgust.

"I've noticed," Ryan replied, shrugging nonchalantly. Typical. Ryan was a right creep.

"Hasn't Tyler gone to see his friend?" Chloe questioned from behind Jody, watching some sort of Youtube tutorial on the computer with Candi-Rose.

"Yep," Jody responded, popping the 'p'.

Tyler was out seeing Ricardo Barber who was back in town for the weekend. Both guys had asked Jody to come along—Rick had been like a big brother to her (and Tyler) during her first few years in care—but she'd declined, saying she'd see Rick next time. Truth was, she didn't want them to realise something was up; for some reason, she hadn't told Tyler about her encounter with her mother and she wasn't planning to. She literally couldn't bring herself to tell him, and she didn't know why.

Her phone rang again and, this time, she took it out of her pocket and put it on silent.

.:. QK .:.

Some things could only be discussed face to face and the only way Jody could go face to face with her mother was if she went to her. While she would've preferred to see her mother at Ashdene Ridge, under the watchful eyes of Mike and May-Li, it seemed obvious to her that her mother wasn't going to call her social worker without being prodded by her first. That was how she found herself standing in front of her mother's house once again, though this time her mother smiled at her from the doorway instead of at that random man. Jody, still incensed due to the earlier incident, didn't return the smile, choosing to maintain a somewhat neutral expression as she entered the house.

"Why don't you have a seat, babes?" Mum suggested with a kind smile on her face. Rather than feeling more at ease, Jody narrowed her eyes at her mother's warm tone. Mum only ever used terms of endearment when she wanted something from Jody, like that time she tried to get her to stay with her and their family instead of returning to Elm Tree House with her friends and Gina.

Jody stayed rooted to her spot, ignoring her mother's offer. "What have you said to Luke?"

"Luke?" Mum repeated, her smile turning into a frown. "Don't talk to me about that traitor. He thinks he's too good for us now."

"Too good for  _us_?"

"He told me that he blames me for Kingsley," Mum snarled, crossing her arms. "As if I'd be stupid enough to ask Kingsley to burgle my own house!" She scoffed. "This is all down to those mates of his from uni. Swanky idiots, the lot of them!"

Jody's world came crashing down on her. Luke was ignoring her not because their mother had said something to him but because he was ashamed to have an ex-convict mother, a jailbird brother, and a care kid sister. While their mother may not have said anything, the bad Jackson blood they all got from her was ultimately responsible and, by extension, so was she. Jody couldn't take the anger boiling within her out on Luke—she didn't have the time or money to go to his place in London—but she could take it out on the root cause of all this trouble: their stupid mother.

"It's your fault that Luke hates us all, Mum!" she shouted, visibly startling her mother. "Not his friends' or Kingsley's but yours!"

Instead of yelling back like Jody expected, her mother dropped down onto the white leather sofa she'd asked Jody to sit on earlier.

"We don't need Luke," she said softly, taking her mobile phone out of her pocket. It was one of the latest models out there and Jody hoped to God that it wasn't stolen because her mother's benefits couldn't possibly have covered the cost of the phone, not even one on contract. "Come here, love. Look at this."

She didn't want to comply, she really didn't, but it was as if her legs had a mind of their own as they dragged her over to her mother. Unfortunately for her, the phone screen displayed a picture of the last man she wanted to see right now.

"I'm so not interested in your boyfriend, Mum," she grumbled, sitting down next to her mother.

"But you should be," Mum quickly said, swiping to a picture of herself and the man in some coffee shop. "We could be a family one day."

Flinching, Jody inched away from her mother. "Family?" she repeated dryly, recalling their last moment as a family. What with her being locked in her room by Kingsley as Mum watched Eastenders downstairs, it really wasn't a happy memory.

"Yes," her mother responded with a nod, putting her mobile down and turning to her daughter. Mum moved closer to Jody, closing the gap said girl had created mere seconds ago. "Me, you, and Grant."

"What family, Mum?" Jody asked tiredly, her short talk with her mother having emotionally drained her without her realising it until now. "We don't work as a family. The last time I got involved with our family, your son—my own brother—left me to burn to death." She choked the last few words out, almost feeling the smoke burning her lungs again.

"And I'll never forgive him for it," Mum said fiercely, gripping one of Jody's hands. "But our new family will just be us three. No Kingsley, no Luke."

Her heart grew heavy at the mention of Luke but skipped at thought of a new family. It was all she'd ever wanted albeit including her brothers but perhaps it was the closest she was going to get. Maybe Mum and Grant could give her a little brother or sister as well. Women could have babies in their late forties, couldn't they?

Wait... what was she thinking? Denise Jackson was an awful mother. She didn't deserve to have any more children and neither did any of the other Jacksons, including Jody herself. She shook her head, pulling her hand out of her mother's grip.

As if Mum could read Jody's mind, she said, "I know I've let you down before but it's different now. Kingsley's back in prison where he belongs and I won't let him back in here again. No more of him."

No more Kingsley meant no more locked doors... Maybe Mum had a point. She was a bad mother in the past because she was scared of Kingsley and let him do whatever he wanted as a consequence but he was locked up now and she was unlikely to forgive him after his burgling stint. Maybe it could work. But who was this Grant? What if he was just as bad as Kingsley or worse? She wouldn't put it past her mother to date a loser like Kingsley and their absent father.

"I don't know, Mum." It simply sounded too good to be true.

"You'll be fifteen this year. When you're sixteen, your children's home will chuck you out on the streets. You'll have to latch on to some idiot like your father just to survive and before you know it, he'll leave you with nothing but three kids to your name."

Jody looked at her mother, horrified. She wouldn't end up on the streets, she'd go into a semi-independent flat like Carmen and Tee. She definitely wouldn't have any kids, not if she could help it. She doubted she'd ever get a boyfriend—who'd want to date a tomboy care kid? Mum was wrong but the truth wasn't much better; she wouldn't be homeless or dependent on a man but she'd be alone in some flat with no one but a random roommate at best. Tyler wouldn't be around, not when he'd probably be living with his mother again just like he'd always wanted, and the DG lot would forget her in the blink of an eye.

"If you and Grant took me in, I could stay until I'm eighteen?" she implored, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. She'd never lived alone before—she didn't think she could cope, at least not until she went to uni.

"You could stay until you're ready to get your own place," Mum clarified, that kind smile returning in full force. "Think—"

The doorbell ringing cut Mum off and she literally leapt off the sofa, running her hand over her hair and running to the door. Jody watched in bewilderment, standing up when her mother let Grant in. She wrung her hands together, not knowing how to behave. In her excitement, she'd forgotten to ask her mother if Grant knew she was in care.

Grant exchanged a few words and a kiss with Mum before spotting Jody. "Hi, you must be Jody," he greeted, walking over to where said girl was standing. "I'm Grant. I passed you on the way out last week but I had no idea who you were yet."

"Yeah, I remember," Jody replied, racking her brains for something to say. What did one say to their mother's boyfriend? 'I hope you and Mum work out' or 'Welcome to the family'? Huh, what _family_? "Err, hi," she added as an afterthought, almost kicking herself for how dumb she sounded.

Luckily, Grant didn't seem fazed by her awkwardness. "So, are you glad to be back home?" he questioned, smiling warmly like he had the first time she saw him. "Your mum told me you were spending a week up at your friend's place. What was his name again?"

"Taylor," Mum quickly supplied.

Jody glared at her mother. Not only had her mother lied about where she was last week but she didn't even know Tyler's name. Even Kingsley knew that! It suddenly occurred to her how her mother hadn't even spoken to Tyler once whereas Jody was on a first name basis with Sally. It felt so wrong.

"Tyler," she corrected, forcing herself to smile. Her mother clearly hadn't told Grant that she was in care. This was going to be a long day...


	2. Chapter 2

Forking through her wardrobe, Jody desperately searched for something nice to wear for the day. Today was going to be a little tight; she was going to go to the park with Tyler first and then leg it to her mother's house so that Grant could pick them up and take them shopping. She still didn't understand why Mum couldn't tell Grant the truth so that he could collect her from her actual home. Actually, she did; Mum hadn't called her social worker yet so any contact Jody had with her mother and Grant, even a lift to the mall, wasn't allowed. What she didn't understand was why Mum wouldn't pick up the phone and make that all-important call.

Cold dread filled Jody as she stopped rummaging through her clothes. Did Mum not want her? Was she lying about wanting them to be a family with Grant? Was she talking to Kingsley again? Was he making her choose between him and Jody? She dropped the jacket she was holding, snapping out of her mental session of Question Time. She was being paranoid. Mum couldn't drop her even if she wanted to—she'd look like a bad mum in front of Grant if she did. But what if she was just using her to impress Grant?

"Woah! What happened here?!"

Jody spun around to see Sasha standing in the doorway to her room, her widened eyes fixed on the clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor. If Sasha was surprised, Jody was even more so; she hadn't realised when she'd made all this mess. She never even knew she had that many clothes. It looked like she had as much as Candi-Rose, or more. She shuddered at the thought. Carmen 2.0 had some of the stupidest frilly dresses she'd ever seen.

"Err, nothing," Jody replied, picking up the jacket she'd just dropped and putting it on. She looked back at Sasha who was still standing there with an amused look on her face. "Can I help you?"

"Nah," Sasha responded, grinning.

Jody gave her a dirty look before surveying herself in the mirror. This jacket wouldn't do—it didn't jibe with the false image her mother had created of her for Grant. She wasn't supposed to look girly per se but she definitely wasn't meant to look like a scruffy tomboy either.

"You got a nice bag I could borrow?" she asked without turning around, knowing that Sasha was still standing there.

"Not one that you could borrow, no," Sasha answered, and Jody could just hear the smugness in her voice. "Why are you so worried? It's just Tyler; he won't care what you wear."

Ugh, she didn't have time for this. She knew where this was going. "I'm not worried at all," she lied, taking her jacket off and throwing it on the floor. "Excuse me," she muttered, pushing past her small friend and going next door.

Just as she was about to knock on the open door, she spotted something that would make her mother very happy even though it made her skin crawl. She braced herself, knowing exactly what she had to do.

.:. QK .:.

"That's a nice jacket, babe," Mum commented, appraisingly eyeing up Candi-Rose's jacket. "Some jewellery wouldn't hurt."

Jody sighed inwardly. Tyler had already given her grief over the jacket the entire bike ride to the park. She could only imagine how much he would tease her over  _jewellery_. "I don't really own any of that stuff, Mum."

"If you're lucky, Grant might get you something," Mum hinted, wagging her eyebrows.

Jody stared at her in disbelief, wondering whether her mother loved Grant or his wallet. She understood the desire for money better than anyone—care kids were frequently skint—but surely a man's personality mattered more than his paycheck? Well, Grant was a good bloke, there was no denying that, but Jody wasn't so sure that he was her mother's type at all. If he had been, Jody's father would've been someone like him rather than her actual father, a man she knew nothing of except his name.

Grant's car pulled up in front of the house, making Mum literally jump up and down in excitement. Jody cast a glance at the shed she'd put her bike in, through the kitchen window, before following her mother outside.

Over the next few hours, Grant took Jody and her mother around two whole shopping centres, listening to the latter rave on about how much she 'wished' she could afford to buy about half of the clothes she came across. Never too bothered about what she wore, Jody was more interested in furniture, particularly photo frames and lava lamps. Maybe she still felt guilty for stealing stuff from her housemates on a subconscious level but she really couldn't stop staring at one of the pretty but unremarkable purple lava lamps.

On the way out of the last shop, Jody spotted a poster/photo of a model with the same unruly hair as Tyler and laughed to herself. She loved Tyler's hair but it looked pretty ridiculous at times.

"What's so funny?" Grant asked, not unkindly.

Jody blushed, embarrassed at being caught, and saw her mother giving her a questioning look. She wasn't sure what to say. Tyler was on her mind a little too often to be deemed healthy and she just had this niggling feeling that her mother didn't like him even though she knew nothing about him.

"I just remembered something funny," she said casually, biting her lip. "Inside joke," she added, just in case either adult wanted an explanation.

"Jody and her friends!" Mum exclaimed fondly, playfully swatting Jody on the arm. She turned to Grant and said, "They're such a nice bunch of kids. They get top grades an' everything, just like our Jody does."

Mum definitely wasn't talking about the DG lot. Half of them couldn't even be bothered to do their homework until a week and a half after it was due and the other half rushed through their homework like there was no tomorrow (which there often wasn't). Her grades were better than Tyler's, but only slightly, and while the two of them had decent grades, they definitely weren't the cream of the crop like her mother was suggesting.

"Well, I should very much like to meet them someday," Grant commented as warmly as ever, smiling brightly at Jody. She'd never met someone quite as jolly as him—even when the man wasn't smiling, his eyes were. She returned the smile. "Who wants ice cream?"

Jody thought it was a bit odd to eat ice cream in January but who was she to talk? She'd spent a good hour cycling around town with Tyler in nothing but her usual attire and Candi-Rose's thin jacket, and had then cycled from the park to her mother's place.

"I've had a nice time," Mum told Grant as he handed Jody some chocolate chip ice cream.

"So have I," Jody and Grant answered at the same time, exchanging a look before bursting into laughter.

One spilt ice cream later, Jody watched on as Grant and her mother happily chatted away on their way back to the car. She could picture the three of them doing all sorts of things she'd missed out on in the last fourteen years. She could picture a real, proper home. For the first time in years, Jody Jackson felt like she had a real shot at being part of a forever family.

.:. QK .:.

"Ninety-nine, a hundred!" Jody shouted, removing her hands from over her eyes. "Ready or not, here I come!"

As she stepped out of the attic, she still couldn't believe she'd been roped into this. There she'd been, minding her own business, when Floss had stormed in and demanded that she play hide and seek with her and the other younger kids if she didn't want Mike and May-Li to find out that she'd been sneaking out to meet her 'gran'. Jody had acquiesced, not because she thought Mike and May-Li would believe Floss—the only grandmother she'd known had died over two years ago—but because she didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to herself.

After checking out Charlie's, Floss' and Sasha's rooms, as well as the spare, Jody burst into Tyler's bedroom only for Tyler to let out a resounding shriek.

"Well thanks for knocking!" he exclaimed sarcastically from his perch on the edge of his bed. She really had no idea why he'd shrieked; he wasn't naked, or even half-naked, and it wasn't like he had a secret girlfriend hiding away in the wardrobe. Actually, she wasn't sure about that last one. Without much thought, she threw open the doors to his wardrobe and checked to see if anyone was hiding in there. "Jody!"

"Sorry," she mumbled insincerely, already tired of the children's game. She turned to him, inwardly groaning when she realised she still had seven bedrooms to go. "Do you know where Floss, Finn, Joseph, Taz and Archie are?"

"No idea," he responded, yanking his earphones out of his ears and turning to her. "You'll be done in time for our movie, won't you?"

"Not if I can't find these kids!" she yelled, her temper flaring. Tyler stared back at her in shock. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to calm herself. These days, she was often on edge and it didn't take long for the anger to build up inside her. Even small things set her off and she couldn't stop herself from reacting harshly.

"Err, have you tried the garden?" Tyler implored, looking a little anxious. Jody sighed. The last thing she wanted was for her best friend to have to watch what he said around her like she was some sort of humourless, bitchy girlfriend.

"No," she replied calmly, turning towards the door. "Wish me luck(!)"

Walking towards the garden, she told herself that it'd all be over soon. She and Tyler had been waiting for the movie to premiere on TV for ages and, up until Floss had blackmailed her, she'd been wild (in a good way) with anticipation. She just had to rein herself in and be patient and it'd all be okay.

The first place she checked in the garden was the shed and she found Finn, who wasn't hidden very well, within seconds. She smiled as Finn dejectedly left the shed and followed him out, feeling a little bit lighter. One down, four to go. As she approached the bushes and trees, her phone beeped, indicating that she'd received a message.

_Call me._

She frowned. Usually, her mother didn't bother with texting and went straight to calling. What was up? Looking around, she sat down on the green garden bench and called her mother.

"Hi?"

 _"Sorry, I ran out of voice minutes,"_  Mum started, her voice riddled with urgency.  _"Anyways, you need to get here now. Grant's coming round any minute."_

"What?!" Jody almost roared, feeling her barely controlled temper rise again. "I've got plans! Tell him I'm at Tyler's!"

_"I told him that the other day! What's he gonna think? That my daughter would rather hang out with her boyfriend than with her own mum?!"_

She chose not to tell her mother that most teenage girls would, in fact, put their boyfriends before their mums. Only desperate, love-starved care kids wouldn't. "He's not my boyfriend!" she protested, realising that her mother wouldn't even know her friends let alone any boyfriend of hers. "But you tell  _your_  boyfriend that I won't be there! I can't cancel on Tyler!"

" _Look, Jody, I've already told him that you're at home. Don't turn me into a liar!"_

"Tell him I went out at the last minute!" she said half-heartedly, knowing that that'd make her appear rude. Only a total bitch would go out at the last minute when she knew her mother's boyfriend was coming round to visit them both. However, she really didn't want to give up her time with Tyler.

_"When you're actually living with me, you can go and hang out with Tyler as much as you want! But right now, you need to come here!"_

Somehow, Jody doubted that her mother was telling the truth about her being able to see Tyler in the future but right now, she had no other choice. She lived in the same house as Tyler, she could get him to record the movie so they could watch it later, but she couldn't keep Mum and Grant waiting.

"Fine, I'll be there."

.:. QK .:.

She was so  _stupid_. Why had she thought that things would be any different this time around? Denise Jackson would always be a useless, selfish cowbag. Kingsley Jackson would always be in and out of prison. Luke Jackson would always look after his own interests first, even if it meant cutting his little sister off when she had no other (known) blood family out there.

 _Blood_. Betrayal and duplicity were in their blood, even hers, and bad blood would always out. She'd shown that she was the same as the rest of them these last few days and maybe she was always going to be like this. Maybe there was no escaping. She certainly couldn't escape her mother's words, that was for sure.

"I think I knew it would never work out," she'd said.

Had she now? Why hadn't she called things off before? Why had she made Jody believe they'd have a new family when she knew it was a lost cause from the onset? Had she been hoping for the impossible?

Now that Jody thought about it, maybe Jackson women weren't meant to get the men they wanted. Maybe they only got the men that they deserved: selfish idiots who'd use them and then drop them when it suited them best. Wasn't that what Jody's father had done to her mother? Wasn't that what Kingsley had done to the both of them? Even Luke, the brother Jody thought she could count on, had dropped off the face of the earth. Jackson women weren't meant to be happy. They didn't deserve to be.

"I've still got you though, eh?" she'd said.

As a consolation prize? The last resort? The one she conveniently remembered when Kingsley and Luke were lost to her forever?

"I mean, men come and go, but me and you, we're for keeps," she'd said.

Really? Where was she when Jody was desperately waiting for contact for years on end? Where was she when her own son had left her daughter for dead?

"Give us another chance?" she'd said.

"To do what? String me along and dump me again? You don't do that to the people you love."

"I think I'd best be going," she'd said.

Typical. Denise had known that she couldn't argue with that. That was all she'd ever done throughout Jody's life: abandon her and leave her to the mercy of others—first her brothers, and then the social services.

"I do love you, babes," she'd said.

No, she didn't. How could she? Jody was an accident, unwanted by both of her parents and a nuisance to her older brothers. That much was evident by her father walking out on her when she was tiny, Denise only talking to her a few times after the Kingsley incident before forgetting her again, Kingsley leaving her to burn to death, and Luke ditching her in favour of his posh friends.

"I'll be in touch when I'm ready."

She wouldn't be, and Denise probably knew it. It was a formality, that was all. Jody would be out of Ashdene Ridge within a couple of years and then she wouldn't need any blood relatives—any of the Jacksons. Even if it meant she had to be alone for the rest of her life, she was never going to let that rotten lot back in, least of all their matriarch. She didn't want anything to do with the Jacksons and she didn't even want to be one of them anymore.

In fact,  _she_  would officially cut  _them_  off forever. Shortly after Jody's father had walked out, her mother had signed deed polls to change all of her children's last names to hers. Jody Jackson had been born Jody Gray and now, fourteen years later, she was going to reclaim her original name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This one will probably read very rushed but that's because this chapter sorta jumps from before S6E1 to the end of or perhaps after S6E2. I know the last name thing just seems a little random but there is a reason for it.**


	3. Chapter 3

"Are you sure about this, Jody?" Mike asked, looking carefully at said girl. "It's a long process and you probably won't be able to reverse it."

"I'm sure," Jody replied confidently, having already given her name change a lot of thought over the last couple of days. She was ready for a fresh start, a life without the burden of the last fourteen years of abuse and neglect resting on her shoulders.

"Well, I'll give your social worker a call and see what he has to say but I want to hear from you first," he said, taking his glasses off and motioning for her to sit down. "Why?"

Jody took a seat on the office sofa, feeling oddly nervous. In her mind, her decision couldn't have made any more sense than it already did but she felt that Mike, May-Li and her housemates would see things differently. A certain few would definitely give her grief for it and she wasn't sure how she'd justify herself. After all, most of them were in care in the first place because they also had horrible mothers but none of them had done what she was going to do. Was she being petty? Over the top? Pretentious?

Sighing, she wondered when she'd started caring what that lot thought. (Since the beginning).

"I just want to forget her," she admitted, involuntarily recalling how her mother had mercilessly called her names after the whole Grant fiasco. "I feel like she's been holding me back this entire time and that I'll become like her and Kingsley if I don't cut her off now."

"You won't become like her."

She laughed mirthlessly. Mike was being nice, doing his job. He could hardly agree with a statement condemning her, even if she'd said it about herself. But what did he know? He probably came from a nice, stable home, not the Birmingham hellhole she'd spent her first eight years in.

"It's in my blood, Mike. It's in the filthy Jackson blood. I know that I can't change my blood but I can drop their family name. I feel like if I don't do it now, I'll be in prison by the time I'm eighteen." She paused, looking up at his understanding eyes. "I'm the only one of us who hasn't been to prison, Mike. The  _only_  one. I want to keep it that way."

"You're better than that, Jody. You won't go to prison no matter what surname you have."

She shrugged. "Maybe not while I'm still here but I don't know what sort of adult I'll be. I've wasted almost half of my life waiting for her to get her act together, Mike, and now I've finally realised that she can't give me the family I want.  _Wanted._ "—it was too late for a forever family now—"I just want to start over as freshly as I can..." She stopped for a bit before tentatively asking, "Does that make sense?"

"Do you think it makes sense?" Mike asked in return, the usual sympathetic smile on his face.

"Yeah," she answered with a nod, feeling like a weight was slowly being lifted off her shoulders. "Yeah, I th—No, I know it does."

"Well, then, expect to hear from your social worker soon!" Mike exclaimed, putting his glasses back on and swivelling towards his computer. "Off you go."

"Thanks, Mike," Jody said gratefully, getting up and opening the office door.

"You're welcome," she heard Mike call back as she exited.

Closing the door behind her, she walked towards the lounge to find Ryan, Alex and Sasha... hanging out. She raised an eyebrow at the unlikely trio before asking them if they'd seen Tyler. All three responded in the negative. She decided to try the garden to see if he was playing football with the other kids when Ryan spoke up, stopping her in her tracks.

"What's the point in changing your name?" he inquired in that dismissive manner of his. Alex and Sasha both looked questioningly at Jody but she ignored them, looking straight at Ryan. She wasn't surprised in the least that he somehow knew; snooping around and upsetting people was all he was good at. "It's not like it'll erase the crime from your blood."

It would've been so easy to give in to her irritation and physically wipe that smug smirk off Ryan's face like he no doubt wanted but even he wasn't going to get the better of her today. She'd just turned over a new leaf and letting him, of all people, ruin that would be weak and stupid of her.

"You know, Ryan, if any one of us ends up in prison after leaving this place, it'll probably be you," she shot back, crossing her arms, "since you're the resident sociopath an' all."

Ryan's face turned beetroot red as Sasha and Alex guffawed, and Jody walked away to find Tyler, feeling awfully satisfied. He'd probably—no, definitely—try to get back at her for that one but she couldn't care less. Life as a Gray started now.

.:. QK .:.

On a cold February morning, Jody waddled down the road back to Ashdene Ridge, her teeth chattering wildly as she berated herself for taking a walk on such a morning. From the way the icy cold had seeped through to her gloved fingers, it had to be below zero degrees Celsius, and she had a strong inkling that it was the coldest day of the month and maybe even the year. She shuddered; there were still three weeks of February to look forward to. The sound of hurried footfalls behind her reminded her exactly why she'd left the house at all.

"I'm never going out with you again, you idiot!" she declared half-heartedly, her breath visibly puffing out in front of her.

"What? We're going out?!" he squeaked from behind her before she felt a pair of arms wrap around her middle and literally sweep her off her feet, spinning her around. "Oh, Jody, you've made me the happi—" Unfortunately for them both, he'd underestimated the slippery sleet beneath his feet and both teenagers went tumbling down onto the cold, hard ground.

"Tyler!" she yelled, carefully moving off him and then turning to look down at him. He looked a sorry sight; he was lying flat on his back, hair askew, and was deliriously gazing up at her like he'd had a knock to the head. He'd broken her fall but had obviously taken the brunt of it. "What did you have to go and do that for?" she admonished, leaning over and checking to see if he was bleeding.

"I don't know," he croaked in response, flashing her a halfway cheeky grin as she sighed in relief, having found no blood whatsoever. "I just got really excited for Floss. She's been waiting for us to start going out for ages."

Jody scowled. Tyler often took jokes way too far and although she was now used to the DG lot thinking they were either a couple or well on their way to being one, the popular notion still made her uncomfortable. It hit too close to home and Tyler's behaviour really didn't help matters; sometimes, she felt like he was flirting with her for real, especially when it was just the two of them, and it made her feel all giddy inside like one of those girly girls from those movies Candi-Rose liked to watch. She shook her head. She was seeing what she wanted to see in his actions rather than seeing them for what they actually were. They were just mates and that was all they were ever going to be.

"Oh, shut up," she grumbled, offering him her hand and gently pulling him up to a sitting position. Together, they slowly and diligently found their way to their feet, stumbling a little in the process. "You better not die on me later," she warned as they resumed their walk back home.

"Never," he replied with a wink, and she had to speed up a bit so that he didn't see her blush.

Within minutes, Ashdene Ridge came into view and Jody, freezing from head to toe, practically ran to the door. To her surprise, May-Li opened the door just as she reached it, as if she'd been expecting her, and ushered her and Tyler in with a sense of urgency.

"Jody, where have you been?!" May-Li asked, sounding somewhat anxious. "We called you loads of times and you wouldn't pick up!" She turned to Tyler. "You as well!"

"Err, I had it on silent," Jody answered, reaching for her phone in her pocket as Tyler mumbled something about having left his phone in his room. Her eyes widened upon seeing five missed calls from Mike and a whopping thirteen from May-Li.

"What's the big deal?" Tyler questioned from her left. "It's not like there's a blizzard out there."

Jody nodded in agreement, wondering why they were being treated like little children (well, her anyway) when Mike suddenly popped his head out of the office doorway, a solemn expression on his face. She quickly realised that there was something more going on and she didn't like the way May-Li and Mike exchanged a glance as if they knew something that she didn't. She and Tyler exchanged their own glance and she could see that he was as apprehensive as she was.

"Tyler, go upstairs and get your bag," May-Li said, making a bit of a funny face at Tyler's messed up hair. Jody would've cracked a smile if it wasn't for the dead serious atmosphere.

"Jody, come inside," Mike finally spoke, running his hand over his bald head. "I've got something to tell you."

Exchanging a final glance with Tyler who was still rooted to his spot, Jody clenched her fists before following Mike into the office.

.:. QK .:.

"What's going on?" Jody questioned, taking her gloves off as May-Li followed her in and closed the door behind her.

Shoving the gloves into one of the pockets of her parka, she tried to remember if she'd done anything to upset anyone recently—even Ryan—and came up with nothing. Naturally, her thoughts turned to Tyler and she wondered if Mike and May-Li wanted to talk to her about something he'd done, though she knew he hadn't pissed anyone off lately because, as per usual, she'd been around him practically twenty-four seven.

Mike sunk into his chair, sighing deeply. "Don't worry, you're not in any trouble."

Rather than relaxing, Jody felt a sense of foreboding creep up on her and then settle on her chest like a heavy weight. Nevertheless, she nodded as she took a seat on the office sofa for the second time that week, though this time around the air was thick with tension.

"There's no easy way to say this but the police found your mother's body at her home this morning," Mike stated, clasping his hands together. "They suspect that she passed away around forty-eight hours ago and they would like to ask you some questions. Her death was unexpected so it's being treated as suspicious."

"Oh," Jody let out, for lack of a better word. She sat there, waiting for the tears, a punch to the gut, or some sort of heart-wrenching sensation she'd read about in novels, but no such thing happened. "Do I have to go to the police station or...?"

"It's completely up to you," May-Li spoke up from her perch on the sofa's arm for the first time since they'd stepped into the office. "They can come here or you can go to them."

"I'll see them here, I guess," she said, licking her lips as she waited to feel some sort of emotion. Any emotion. Why wasn't she reacting? Her own mother, cowbag though she was, had just died and all she could do was wonder why the police couldn't just go and talk to Luke or Kingsley instead. What was wrong with her? "But why do they want to see me? What do I know?"

"It's just standard procedure," Mike responded. "When death is unexpected, police usually look to neighbours and then family members."

Family? She almost snorted. What a great family they were, four individuals who were scattered across the country and never spoke to each other unless they wanted to use one another (as in the cases of Denise and Kingsley Jackson). Family indeed. Of course, the police would soon find out what sort the Jacksons were when they got round to looking at their criminal records.

"Just in case you're wondering, the funeral probably won't take place until a couple of weeks from now because of the inquest," May-Li stated, placing a comforting hand on Jody's shoulder. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I guess," Jody answered nonchalantly. Mike and May-Li sounded like they'd read the entire gov-uk page on the whole death issue. They probably had. "Are they going to question my b"—no, they weren't her brothers anymore and neither was their mother hers—"Luke and Kingsley as well?"

Mike looked a little surprised at her question. Clearly, even he was expecting her to display some emotion, probably anger. "Perhaps not Kingsley but I expect they'll question Luke."

"Hmm, okay," she replied, sounding and feeling wholly disinterested. She turned to May-Li who still had her hand planted firmly on her shoulder. "I don't want to go to her funeral."

This time, May-Li was the one who appeared surprised, maybe even confused. She glanced at Mike before looking back at Jody. "Well, like I said, it's still a while away. You might—"

"I won't change my mind," Jody interjected, knowing what May-Li had been about to say. She turned back to Mike. "I already said goodbye to her and to Luke and Kingsley when I decided to go back to using my birth name." She looked down at the office carpet, ashamed that she couldn't muster up any emotion other than the guilt she harboured for not behaving like a  _normal_  bereaved daughter. Huh, who was she kidding? She wasn't normal. She never had been. "She was already dead to me."

"Jody—" Mike started but was swiftly cut off.

"No, I really meant what I said, Mike. I'm a Gray now, and I don't have a mother or brothers," she explained, rising to her feet. She needed to get out of there, not because it was all becoming too much but because she wasn't feeling  _enough_. "I've got to go; I'll be late for school. I'll see the police after I get back."

"Jody, you don't have to go to school today," Mike informed, rising from his seat as Jody slung her school bag over her shoulder. She heard him and May-Li call after her as she yanked the door open but she paid no heed, heading straight to the front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I KILLED DENISE JACKSON! YAY! I hate Denise. She was an awful mum.**


	4. Chapter 4

Whoever had coined the phrase 'easier said than done' had hit the nail on the head. Forgetting someone you'd once loved and putting her behind you truly was easier said than done, especially if she was the one who'd given you life and brought you into the world. Grieving someone you didn't like was even harder; it didn't make sense to grieve someone whose death brought you a sense of relief or to grieve someone who'd only ever caused you pain. Grieving someone you'd cut out of your heart and out of your life seemed impossible... and yet, Jody Gray was expected to do just that.

"Jody, it's okay to be upset," May-Li stated gently, putting an arm around Jody who immediately shrugged it off. "Many people find themselves grieving someone they loved but didn't necessarily like. You're allowed to be upset just like anyone else."

"But I'm not upset, am I?" Jody responded, hanging her head in her hands.

It'd been three days since she'd been notified of her mother's death and questioned by the police but she still felt little to nothing about her supposed loss; the only thing she did feel was irritation when Mike and May-Li treated her like a fragile China doll that would break any minute and when Tyler kept asking her if she was alright as if she was on the verge of falling into his arms and bursting into tears. Even the other kids, save Ryan, were going easy on her—Ryan himself kept making snarky comments about there being one less criminal in the world which was pretty ironic given his disposition. She didn't stop him, however. How could she? Making him stop would be the same as standing up for Denise Jackson, something she would never do in a million years.

"Aren't you?" May-Li asked earnestly. "You have trouble sleeping, you barely touch your food, and you ask me to drive you to the gym every single day."

"No!" she snapped, lifting her head and moving to the other end of the sofa. "If I am upset, it's because I'm not upset!" she blurted out, finally admitting what she'd been holding in for days. "The truth is that I couldn't care less that she's dead! There, I've said it! Can I go now?!"

"Not so fast, Jody," May-Li started, forcing said girl to reluctantly stay seated. "Look, you clearly have a lot on your mind and it's affecting your health. You need to talk to someone about this, get it all off your chest."

"No, I don't," Jody protested, stubbornly crossing her arms. "Just take me to the gym."

May-Li followed suit. "I'll take you to the gym but you'll have to do something for me." Jody rolled her eyes but begrudgingly nodded, prepared to do anything to get that lift to the gym. She had the option of taking the bus but she wasn't exactly rich and didn't feel like borrowing from one of the others because of the way they'd all been acting around her recently. "Talk to someone about how you're feeling by the end of the day and I'll take you to the gym every day this week. Don't even think about lying, though. I'll be questioning the person you pick to make sure you actually spoke to them. If you choose not to, I might have to get a therapist for you."

Jody got a sour taste in her mouth, her hastily drafted plan to get Tyler to lie for her ruined within a heartbeat. He would undoubtedly put his foot in it if May-Li interrogated him and there was no way in hell that she was actually going to tell him how she felt. He wouldn't understand, and she honestly couldn't blame him; Sally had always wanted Tyler and had braved her illness to become a better mum, a far cry from Denise who called her own little girl an accident—to her face—and thought that locking her up in a room as discipline was normal. Sasha, her (arguably) next closest friend was mere days away from moving back in with her mother and brothers—the complete opposite of her—so she wouldn't do either. Just how was she going to get out of this one?

.:. QK .:.

"So..." Jody began, looking around the... interesting bedroom.

"So..." Charlie echoed, offering up an awkward smile to the younger girl. She looked like she had no idea what to say to Jody (which she probably didn't) because she, like everyone else, was determined to tread on eggshells around the bereaved girl.

"We don't talk much, do we?" Jody asked, feeling as awkward as Charlie looked. Why had she picked her again? She honestly couldn't remember talking to her other than the time they helped Floss out with her puberty issues and that time she tried to help with the T-shirts only to be told to get lost.

"No, we don't," Charlie answered before suddenly looking concerned. "But you  _can_  talk to me! I'm here for you," she assured, making big meaningful eyes at her.

Jody sighed. She needed to cut to the chase and get this all out of the way as soon as possible. "Look, May-Li told me that I have to talk to someone about how I... feel... before the day's up. I'm here because it was either you or Ryan."

"Why?" Charlie questioned, seemingly confused. "I mean you  _can_  talk to me"—Jody had to refrain from rolling her eyes at the older girl's excessive diligence—"but why not Tyler? Or Sasha?"

"Well, Sash is moving back in with her mum any day now and Sally has never not wanted Tyler. They just wouldn't get it," Jody explained, biting her lip as she thought about how much her mother had hated her. "Ryan hates his mum and I've heard that yours is in prison like mine was. Obviously, I wasn't going to go for Ryan."

"How do you know that my mother's in prison?!" Charlie exclaimed, sounding worried. "No one was supposed to know that!"

"Ryan let it slip," Jody said the first thing that came to mind. She couldn't admit that she'd accidentally found out after eavesdropping on Mike and May-Li because she thought they'd been talking about her. "He knows everything about everyone." Well, she wasn't lying about that. Ryan really did know everything about everyone, sometimes even before the person in question was aware. Jody's words seemed to spur Charlie on rather than appease her—she looked like she was about to storm downstairs any second now. "Anyway, I picked you because you understand what it's like to be let down by your mother."

That seemed to calm Charlie down. She nodded sadly, a sympathetic smile etching its way onto her face. "So, how do you feel about it all?"

Taking a deep breath, Jody decided to just come out with it all. Charlie seemed trustworthy, giving off the impression that whatever she said would remain within these four walls, and it was miles better than talking to either Ryan or a random therapist.

"I feel a little guilty, I suppose, because I'm not really upset that she's gone," she confessed, her eyes downcast. "Not like I should be, anyway. You know, I've been in care for six years now and I've spent most of that time hoping that she'd fix up so that we could finally be a proper family but after what happened with Grant—her ex—I realised that she was never going to be a decent mum, especially not to me. I was her accident, the child she never wanted, so why should I be upset that she's dead? And... I guess I kind of already thought of her as dead when I dropped her surname because I knew that she would never able to give me the family I always fantasised about."

"So you feel like you don't love her anymore because of what she's done?" Charlie inquired softly.

"I don't know," Jody replied, staring down at the carpet. "I'd be upset if I did, wouldn't I? I'd cry, or feel like I can't breathe, or  _something_."

"Well, you are having trouble sleeping aren't you? I wouldn't say that that's nothing."

"No," Jody responded, shaking her head. "The reason I can't sleep is that, sometimes, I can't help but wonder if she died because I didn't get in touch with her like I said I would."

Charlie appeared to be confused again. "Wait, she didn't...?"

"The police said she probably fell down the stairs," Jody hastily cut in, not wanting to give Charlie the wrong idea, "but she was forty-something, not eighty! People her age don't just randomly fall down the stairs..." She felt something tug at her heartstrings and released a shaky breath. "What if it was my fault? Because I care about my friends and carers more than her? Like, karma or something?"

"You shouldn't think like that. You're, what, fourteen? You can't blame yourself. Even if you're right, your mum was an adult and was responsible for her own actions." Jody relaxed a little, feeling like she'd just popped a gross and burdensome pimple. Maybe she'd needed to hear that, that small reassurance that this wasn't down to her. "And you know what else?" Jody looked up at Charlie, wondering what else she had to say. "You wouldn't feel guilty if you didn't care about her at all. I think you just didn't want to let yourself feel anything because of what it might mean."

It was then that Jody realised that she had felt something a little earlier—that little pull to her heartstrings—and that maybe she wasn't so heartless and unfeeling after all. She was still angry at her mother and she still didn't want anything to do with the Jacksons but she wasn't the emotionally detached socio she'd feared she was becoming. She stood up, smiling at the older girl who'd patiently lent her an ear for the last few minutes.

"Thanks, Charlie."

Charlie smiled in return. "No problem. Happy to help!"

.:. QK .:.

Sasha, Ryan, Jody and Tyler all sat in the quiet room preparing for the upcoming Year Ten GCSE mocks. Jody chewed on the end of her pen, looking up from her GCSE maths textbook to see Sasha, who looked like she was having trouble focusing, giving her a disgusted look. She removed the pen from her mouth, chancing a glance at the boys to see Tyler smiling to himself and Ryan turning to a page of the same textbook that she could only dream of reaching by the end of the day. The room was dead quiet, as per its name, the only sounds audible being the heavily muffled voices of Charlie, Alex and May-Li as they discussed what Jody assumed to be college applications. She flinched. She didn't even know what she wanted to do at college yet and she didn't have very long to decide; this time next year, it'd be her, Tyler and Ryan in the office with their carers (Sasha would be at home, discussing her options at length with her mother and stepfather's undivided attention on her).

The four of them continued to study in record-breaking silence—in DG terms—until the connecting door between the quiet room and the office opened and Mike popped his head around said door. "Jody, can I borrow you for a minute?" he asked in a whisper, smiling apologetically to the others.

Nodding, Jody stepped into the office for what felt like the millionth time that week and Mike gently closed the door behind her. May-Li, Alex and Charlie were no longer there so she assumed that what he had to say to her was private and for her ears only.

"Are you sure you don't want to give the mocks a miss on grounds of bereavement?" he implored, walking around her to get to his desk. This was the second time he was bringing this up, the first time being on the day he'd informed her of her mother's death. "It's been less than a week since your mother passed away. According to your school policy, you can sit the mocks later."

"I'm sure, Mike," she replied, leaning against the office door. "I want things to go back to normal ASAP. Keeping busy is the best way to do that, right?"

"Yes, it is."

Jody raised an eyebrow, looking around. "Did you call me in here just to ask me that?"

"No," Mike answered, holding his index finger up at her as if to say 'one sec' as he clicked on something on his computer. "Actually, your social worker gave me a call. Luke's clearing out your mother's place because the landlord wants to rent it out again and he wants to know if you want anything sent here to you. He's going to sell whatever he can to cover the funeral costs."

Jody felt like she'd been punched in the gut. Instead of simply giving her a call or sending her a text, Luke had gone through the official channels just to determine one simple thing. Was he really that ashamed of her that he couldn't bring himself to talk to her directly? Was having a sister in care really that embarrassing to admit to his fancypants mates? Wait... why did she care anyway? He wasn't her brother anymore so he could do what he liked. She'd been right to cut him and Kingsley off.

Noticing Mike staring questioningly at her, clearly expecting an answer, she quickly responded. "I'd like the lava lamp if it's still there." There was a good chance her mother had smashed it after Jody had broken her and Grant up but she rather liked that lamp and thought it'd fit in nicely with her newly redecorated, mostly purple bedroom.

"Okay," Mike said, typing something up. Knowing him, he was probably using the Sticky Notes application. She bit her lip, refraining from smiling at his forgetfulness. He was so old. "Anything else?"

"Err, no." She hadn't lived with her mother in so long that she doubted anything she would want was lying around that house. After their failed attempt at a family back when she'd been nine, Gina, boss that she was, had recovered everything.

"Alright, off you go then," Mike ordered. Jody put her hand on the connecting door's handle, about to turn it when Mike spoke up again. "Oh, wait, I almost forgot! The funeral is on Tuesday."

Turning the handle, she shrugged. "I'm not going so it doesn't matter anyway. I'd better get back to work."

.:. QK .:.

The next day, Jody stood right at the back of the queue for the bathroom, behind all of the younger kids. She had a raging headache from the previous night's cramming and felt like throttling them all to get to the front but she barely stopped herself, deciding it wasn't worth the trouble she'd undoubtedly get in. Ryan, Sasha and Tyler had all somehow beaten the younger ones to the bog and were all downstairs, probably preparing for the second round of cramming. As if on cue, Floss and Candi-Rose who were right at the front of the queue started yelling at each other and Jody groaned, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. Typical. Just when she actually needed the others to tread on eggshells around her, they were screaming like banshees instead.

"Shut it!" she roared, and the whole corridor fell silent. Floss, Candi-Rose, Taz, Joseph, Archie and Finn all turned to look at her with wide eyes. Alex, who'd just exited his room, took advantage of the silence and dashed into the bathroom, setting off another commotion.

"Jody!" Charlie called, her voice barely audible over everyone else's. She appeared around the corner, seemingly ignoring the chaos going on around her. "There's a parcel downstairs for you!"

Too tired to speak, Jody merely nodded, waving the older girl off. She walked out of the queue, knowing that there was no one left to join the line and take her place, and made her way downstairs. She drew a few funny looks from those already downstairs, such as Chloe, but she ignored them all, picking the parcel labelled 'Jody' up and taking it to her room.  _Jody_. Luke probably didn't know that she now had a different surname to his. She briefly entertained the thought of going to the funeral just to inform him of her name change and see his reaction to it.

Opening the parcel, she grinned when she saw the lava lamp, carefully taking it out of the packaging and placing it on her desk. When she saw what else was in the box, however, she frowned, feeling the all too familiar spike of anger rising in her.

_Why?_

She hadn't asked for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **As it happens, my *widdle* brother's currently cramming for his Year 10 mocks which begin this Monday. We don't really see the DG kids doing homework or studying (the earlier few series seemed to be set solely during the summer hols) so I felt like I had to put that in there. Also, I realise February might be too late for college applications but I honestly can't remember when I did mine (it was a̶ ̶f̶e̶w̶,̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ lots of years ago).**


	5. Chapter 5

Jody curled her lip in disgust as she stared at the framed photo she'd shown Grant to prove that her mother was a liar. Seeing the photo this soon after the incident stung; it only reminded her of the hate-fuelled words her mother had flung her way right after Grant had left. So, this was what Luke thought of her. Just because the nine-year-old version of her had wanted them to be a family so bad, he thought that she'd want the crummy photo that he clearly had no interest in taking for himself. Well, he was wrong. She wanted the stupid thing even less than he did.

Picking the photo up, frame and all, she aimed for a bare spot on her wall and threw it as hard as she could. Since her door was open, a bunch of kids ran into the bedroom not seconds later, gasping and 'woah'ing as they marvelled at the photo and the smithereens of glass on the floor.

"Hey!" Taz exclaimed, peering up at Jody. "Is that really you? You look as small as me in that photo!"

"It  _was_  me," Jody corrected, bending down and picking the photo up. This photo couldn't be allowed to exist any longer, not when it tormented her with her foolish girlhood hopes.

Storming out of her room and hopping down the stairs two at a time, she passed Mike in the lobby. He asked her what on earth was going on upstairs but she didn't answer, heading straight to the kitchen and turning the cooker on.

"Jody?" May-Li called, walking into the kitchen and looking said girl up and down. Jody was aware that she must've looked a sight with her messy hair, rumpled PJs and a seven-year-old photo crumpled in her bloody fingers. She frowned, not having noticed when she'd started bleeding. "What are you doing? Your hand's bleeding!"

"I'm moving on!" Jody answered, ignoring her injury and pushing the photo into the fire. She watched the flames lick at the edge of the photograph, about to burn Kingsley like the fire he'd left her to burn in had almost devoured her, before May-Li pulled her away from the cooker and knocked the photo out of her hand.

As May-Li stamped the fire out, Tyler, who'd watched the entire event unfold from the kitchen doorway, ran up to Jody and started fussing over her.

"What was that about?!" he interrogated, grabbing her bleeding hand. She winced a little as he touched her glass grazed fingers, and pulled her hand out of his grasp. "You could've got hurt!"

"Whatever!" she responded stroppily, groaning when May Li rushed over to her with the first aid kit. "I'm fine!"

"You're not fine!" Tyler protested, an outraged expression on his face. Jody glared at him as May-Li cleaned up her cuts and plastered them. His face softened then and he crossed his arms, lowering his voice by a few notches. "You've hated everything fire related ever since what happened at Kingsley's flat. Why would you go and do something like this?"

She just stared at him, unable to give him an answer that would make even a semblance of sense. The truth was, even she wasn't sure why she'd gone to such extreme lengths. Tearing the photograph up and binning the fragments would've been enough but she'd, for some reason, felt the need to go the extra mile.

Just then, Mike rushed in, his eyes darting wildly between Jody, May-Li, and the discarded photograph. "Can someone please tell me what is going on here?!"

"Jody's following in her mother's footsteps," Ryan taunted, a sickening smirk on his face. "Arson today, who knows what tomorrow."

Jody's blood literally froze as she searched for words to defend herself but came up with none. In an effort to become less like the Jacksons, had she actually failed and turned into their matriarch instead?

"Oh, get lost, Ryan!" Tyler yelled just as Mike told Ryan off.

"What?" Ryan shrugged, seemingly unaffected by Mike's scolding. "I'm just saying what everyone else is thinking."

"Shut up!" Sasha shouted, lunging at Ryan but being held back by Mike.

Looking around the kitchen, Jody found that Ryan was right. The others, besides Sasha, who had gathered in the room at some point were all staring at her like she was some sort of monster. Unable to take it anymore, she ripped her hand out of May-Li's and ran to the patio door.

.:. QK .:.

Changing her name had done nothing. She could become Jane Smith for all anyone cared and she'd still be a Jackson on the inside, all rotten and evil and prone to anger and violence. She'd seen the look on all of their faces earlier just like she had that time she was made to sit in the living room in front of them all not too long ago. She was a stroppy, crazy bitch and that was never going to change, no matter how much boxing and heart-to-heart talking she engaged in.

The idyllic silence of the garden was interrupted by the heavy footfalls she'd recognise anywhere and she immediately turned away from the direction they were coming from.

"What do you want?" she asked, trying to force some venom into her voice but failing miserably. The lack of sleep last night was finally catching up with her.

"I want you to tell me what's going on," Tyler said, sitting down next to her. She chose not to respond but didn't get up to leave either. She didn't know if he knew this but sometimes she just liked to sit in companionable silence with him. Unfortunately, he wasn't in the mood for silence. "After what happened with that Grant guy, you promised me that you wouldn't shut me out. Why are you going back on that promise?"

"It wasn't a promise," she pointed out, unable to recall using the specific word 'promise'.

"It was as good as, Jodes," he countered. She looked down at her plastered fingers, hoping he'd either shut his mouth or leave her alone. Preferably the former. "Are you going to stay out here in your jammies all day?"

"I'll go up in a bit," she said, suddenly feeling self-conscious and wondering if she stank. She bit her lip, remembering how much she'd stunk on her first day at Elm Tree House. It was one of her many embarrassing memories, and one of many that Tyler was unfortunately privy to.

"Aren't you hungry?"

"No," she answered, blushing as her stomach rumbled just seconds later. She could just tell that he was smiling and had to hide her face in her hands out of embarrassment, even though she still had her back to him.

"Ryan's an idiot. You shouldn't let what he says get to you."

She dropped her hands, looking straight ahead at the flowerbed across the garden. "He's right, though. I'm always angry, just like  _her_. I'm violent too, just like her. I went into care in the first place because she and her sons all assaulted our neighbours, remember?"

"Yeah, I know, but you're alright most of the time. And who doesn't get angry? I know I do." She scoffed. In all the time she'd known him, he'd never once been violent. He was just grasping at straws now. "No, really. Remember that time I shoved Bailey because he thought I was showing off?"

She chuckled despite herself, remembering the amazing bedroom he'd bragged about and what it'd actually turned out to be. "Tyler, you  _were_  showing off."

"Yeah, well, that's not the point, is it?" he dismissed, sounding (mock) affronted. "What I'm trying to say is that we all snap. You've got to stop being so hard on yourself."

"It's just... it feels like the dance competition all over again," she confessed, remembering how low she'd felt at that time. Kingsley, Denise, and, on occasion, Luke had kicked her self esteem to the dogs in the years she'd lived with them before being put in care. These days, it felt like Denise was always in her head, forcing her to be the worst possible version of herself that she could be. "She's just stuck in my head and I can't shake her off, even though I pretty much forgot about her after I changed my name back."

"Maybe she's still in your head because you haven't said goodbye properly," he suggested, and she could hear him shuffling closer to her. She resisted the urge to inch away out of self-consciousness over how bad she probably smelt. "That's what funerals are for."

She frowned, momentarily forgetting her insecurities. "Why should I go? She was an awful mum."

"Because you need to get her out of your head for good. Do it for yourself, not for her, or Luke, or Kingsley." For  _herself_. She'd never thought of it like that. To her, the funeral had represented a Jackson family occasion she ought not to take part in owing to the fact that she was now an ex-member. "I should get back to cramming soon. That science paper is going to be a nightmare."

Oh. Amidst all the chaos, she'd forgotten about the mocks.

"I'm leaving this here," he stated, slipping something on the gravel next to her. "You can rip it up and bin it but please don't go around trying to set it on fire again. As it is, I think you're banned from using kitchen appliances for the rest of the month."

"What?" she exclaimed, throwing her self consciousness out of the window as she finally turned to face him. "How am I supposed to have breakfast?!"

"That's what you've got me for," he replied with a grin. She felt the corners of her lips twitch as he stood up. "I'll see you inside."

She nodded, watching him go before picking up the dog-eared, partially burnt photo he'd left next to her. She wrinkled her nose at the image of her naively happy nine-year-old face, placing her thumbs and index fingers at the top of the photo, ready to tear it straight down the middle...

.:. QK .:.

Jody let loose on the punching bag in front of her, imagining Ryan's face on it. She just hated him sometimes, especially when he tried to upset her for no reason. She wished she could punch the real guy himself but then she'd just be proving him right; she'd be assaulting him just like her mother assaulted their former neighbours. Still, she could do whatever she wanted to  _this_  Ryan.

Recalling the chilling evil he'd displayed when he sent her mother  _the letter_ , Jody swung at the punching bag so hard that it looked like it was going to fly to the other side of the gym. Shortly after, she heard a loud thud on the floor in front of her and ducked out of the way when the punching bag rebounded, spotting a boy around her age lying flat on his back on the floor, blood running down his nose.

"Wow," he said breathlessly as some other gym members helped him sit up.

"I'm so  _sorry_ ," she apologised, her eyes widening as May-Li ran over to them.  _Oh no._

"Jody! What happened?!" May-Li exclaimed, kneeling next to the boy and telling him to lean forward. She turned back to Jody, peering up at her.

"I—I don't know!" Jody spluttered, closing her eyes as she prepared to be grounded forever for causing two nosebleeds within the space of two weeks. Although, to be fair, that boy had appeared out of f***ing nowhere! Her eyes snapped open. She was not going to take the complete blame for this one.

The boy beat her to it. "Uhh, it's my fault," he declared as someone dabbed at his nose. "I wanted to introduce myself to... Jody... but I approached from the wrong side."

May-Li smiled at the boy but didn't look convinced. "Jody, why don't you go and get this young man some water?"

Jody sighed but didn't dare refuse, just in case she got grounded for showing attitude again. She legged it to the water cooler, hastily filling a plastic cup up with ice cold water before carefully but hurriedly walking back to her latest nosebleed victim. She handed the cup to May-Li.

"Here you go, Brandon," May-Li almost cooed, giving the cup to said (?) boy. He thanked her, taking a generous gulp.

Mere minutes later, Jody found herself sitting next to Brandon on a bench owing to May-Li nagging her to make more friends. 'Wouldn't hurt to widen your friend's circle' she'd said. Jody had scoffed. She had Tyler, (some of) the DG lot, and her school friends. She hadn't come to the gym to socialise.

"So," Brandon began, seemingly unfazed by Jody's hostility, "how did you hit that punching bag so hard? Were you imagining someone's face?"

She turned to him, narrowing her eyes at him. "How did you know?"

"I've done the same thing before," he admitted, smiling somewhat shyly.

"You?" she scoffed, sounding nasty without really meaning to. He just looked so harmless that she found that hard to believe.

"Yeah," he responded, still smiling.

"Yeah, well, I was angry at this guy," she confessed, gritting her teeth at the thought of Ryan. "He said something about me and my mother."

"Her?" he questioned, tipping his head towards May-Li. Huh! If only. May-Li's kids were lucky to have a mum like her.

"Nah," she answered, frowning. "She just looks after me. My mother's dead."

"Oh, I'm sorry... So, she's your guardian?"

"She's my carer. I live in a children's home," she elaborated, waiting for Brandon get up and run for the hills. She'd learnt the hard way that most people saw care kids as the scourge of society, the lowest of the low.

However, to her surprise, Brandon remained seated, still smiling. She wondered if the guy ever stopped. He obviously got into boxing because he thought it looked interesting; there was no way this guy had any anger issues.

"My friend's cousin was in one of those for a bit," he stated. "His aunt—my friend's nan—was ill for a few days so he had to stay at the home but she picked him up as soon as she got better. He and his brothers all live with her now."

"Lucky kid," she commented sadly. "Some of us stay in care until we're too old for the system." She was one hundred per cent sure that she was going to end up joining  _that_  club.

"What school do you go to? I don't think I've seen you around before."

Jody wondered how much she ought to say to this guy but answered anyway. She'd probably run into him in the gym a lot from now on and there wasn't really any reason to remain distant from him now that she knew he (probably) wouldn't judge her on her background. Besides, he seemed nice.

.:. QK .:.

After a long day of studying and boxing, Jody trudged into her room to find that the photo frame she'd chucked at the wall was still on the floor where she'd left it. Unceremoniously throwing her gym bag aside, she knelt on the carpet next to the frame and gingerly picked up the shards of glass littering the floor. Following a quick run down the stairs to throw the glass in the glass waste bin, she returned to her bedroom and picked the frame up.

Sitting down on her bed, she surveyed the frame, noting that it was dented at the point of impact and had some purple paint transfer on it. She sighed, realising that one section of the wall would have to be repainted. As for the frame, she didn't know what to do with it. Upcycle it? Give it to charity? Sell it in a car boot sale?

Taking a gander at her room, she realised something for the first time; there were photos plastered all over the walls and framed photos on several pieces of furniture but none of them were of Denise, Luke or Kingsley. For a girl who'd spent almost half her life hoping to reunite with her family, it didn't make much sense. Maybe, just maybe, she'd subconsciously given up on the idea of a forever family a long time ago, way before the Grant fiasco had even occurred. If so, her subconscious was way smarter than she would ever be.

Looking at a picture of her eight-year-old self (taken when she'd first been placed into care) on her bedside, she wondered if she'd ever be a part of a proper family or if she was destined to be the loner Jody Gray formerly Jackson née Gray forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Not too proud of this one but it is what it is.**


	6. Chapter 6

The chapel was relatively quiet; Denise Jackson's friends and relations were few and far between and those she'd actually been on speaking terms with at the time of her death could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Literally. Stopping short of the aisle, Jody looked straight ahead and could see two men sitting together at the front, Luke talking to the pastor, and a few people scattered sparsely across the pews. She only recognised one of those random mourners, identifying her as her mother's next-door neighbour, and could tell that one of the men right at the front was Kingsley just by looking at the back of his head.

"I didn't realise Kingsley was going to be here," she quietly told Tyler as they slid into the back row of seats.

"What's he inside for again?" he asked in a whisper, his eyes following her line of sight.

"Burglary." She purposely left out the fact that Kingsley's victim was the very person whose funeral they were attending right now. That was too shameful for her to admit, even to Tyler.

"He probably didn't hurt the victim and that's why he's allowed out for funerals." She nodded, staring at the back of Kingsley's head. "That's probably a police officer sitting next to him."

As if on cue, Kingsley turned around, doing a double take at the pair of them as if he hadn't expected them—even Jody—to be present. Luke, who was apparently done talking to the pastor, also spotted them, but, unlike Kingsley, he actually approached them. Jody gulped, not knowing how to feel at being 'reunited' with the Jackson men. Before she'd made the last minute decision to attend the funeral, she'd honestly never expected to see either of them again.

"Jody, Tyler," he started, stopping in the aisle to Jody's left. "Thanks for coming."

"We almost didn't," she replied coldly, his abandonment of her still fresh in her mind. "No need to thank us. I came here for myself, not for you."

He appeared a little startled by her response but proceeded to nod understandingly. "Jody... I want to expl—"

"I don't want to hear it," she interjected bitterly, holding her hand up.

Luke's attempt to explain himself finally confirmed her long-held suspicion that he had, in fact, been deliberately withholding contact from her, piercing what was left of her heart and crushing that tiny glimmer of hope she'd had that this had all been some sort of misunderstanding. As a consequence, she felt like she'd been Dumped by her 'family' all over again.

"Jodes?" came a whisper from her right, drawing her out of her thoughts and reminding her that Luke was still standing in the aisle.

"It doesn't matter to me anymore," she finished.  _Luke_  didn't matter to her anymore.

"But—"

"Did you not hear me?!" she hissed, wary of the strangers sitting in the rows in front of her.

Luke looked helplessly at Tyler, clearly expecting assistance, and it made Jody's blood boil. She turned away from the infuriating man standing next to her, actively trying to keep her emotions in check. How dare he behave like the victim here, as if he was the poor brother trying to get through to his uncooperative sister?

"Don't look at me, mate," Tyler spoke up, surprising Jody with the sheer ire in his voice. "You could've picked the phone up anytime these last few days, let alone months, but you chose not to. This is on you."

After opening and closing his mouth a few times, Luke sighed in defeat and retreated to the dais. As he left Jody's line of sight, she saw Kingsley staring at her, looking like he also wanted to come over and say something, but she mustered up a glare so fierce that he almost instantly turned back around. She'd never seen him look so morose and regretful, not even when he'd been pretending to be a good brother just over a year ago. Unfortunately, she didn't have enough time to figure out what was going on in his mind because the pastor finally began the funeral service.

Singing hymns at Denise Jackson's funeral just seemed wrong. The whole family was criminal; Denise and both of her sons had assaulted their then neighbours, in direct violation of 'thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself', and had gone to prison for it, her eldest son was in prison a second time for burgling  _her_  house and had once left his baby sister to burn to death, and the youngest son was a man who callously ignored his little sister who had no other blood family left. Jody was hardly religious but even she could see that the Jacksons belonged in a secular funeral home, not a Godly chapel.

"Would anyone like to say a few words for Denise?"

Jody waited for Luke to answer but he didn't. She was surprised. Even though he wanted to get shot of the family just as much as she did, she'd expected him to give a eulogy; he had been the one to arrange the funeral, after all.

"No one? Alright."

"I will!" she announced, the words leaving her mouth before she even realised that she was speaking. In an instant, all eyes in the chapel turned towards her but she was only interested in one pair in particular.

"Are you sure?" Tyler questioned in a concerned tone. "You don't have anything planned."

Jody nodded at him before standing up, telling the pastor that she wanted to say a few words. The pastor, seemingly a little confused, wordlessly summoned her to the dais. As she strode up to the front of the chapel, Jody felt her nerves light up and wondered if this was such a good idea after all. However, when she stood at the front and faced everyone, observing Tyler's supportive smile and Luke and Kingsley's shocked profiles, she relaxed, knowing that this was the right call.

"Uhh... hi," she began, making eye contact with the random mourners. "Some of you might not know me but... Denise was my mother." She took a deep breath, steadying herself. "I'm not going to stand up here and lie to you. Denise wasn't a good person and she was an even worse mother. I've got no nice memories or stories to tell you about her; I've been in care since I was eight—I'll be fifteen this year—and last month was the first time I saw her in person in about five years. She ignored me for most of those years and only spoke to me a few times after my social worker told her that I almost burnt to death in my gran's old flat." She chanced a glance at Kingsley who seemed to be looking down in shame. Hmm, that was a first.

"No... Denise was the type of mother who let her overbearing son lock her daughter in her room for days on end. She was the type who dunked her daughter's head into an overflowing bathtub when she was angry with her"—one of the female mourners gasped—"and let her sons do the same. She was the type who called her daughter an accident, to her face, almost every single day for years. She was the type who, up until her last days, thought that saying nasty things to each other was what family was all about."

Jody paused, letting herself look at the coffin at the centre of the dais for the first time. The idea of her mother lying in there, lifeless, was surreal; she'd always been a ruthless upstart, always spoiling for a fight. It even seemed a little unfair that Denise couldn't defend herself as her daughter spurted on about her crimes. Looking back at the mourners, Jody recalled her last conversation with Denise, her eyes stinging with long overdue tears.  _Finally_. She almost laughed in relief as the tears and emotion she'd been waiting on for days came to the surface.

"But the last thing she ever said to me wasn't 'you're an accident' or any of the other horrible things she'd said to me before... her last words to me were 'I do love you, babes'," she continued, choking those last few words out as fat, hot tears poured down her cheeks. "Those—I'm sorry"—she sniffed, trying to compose herself, aware that everyone had their eyes solely on her—"Those words will never erase all of the bad things she's done to me but, hopefully, they'll allow me to let go of all the anger I've ever felt towards her, and finally move on with my life." She stepped away from the lectern, hastily wiping away her blinding tears. "Umm, thanks."

The pastor stepped forward, gently patting Jody on the back. "Thank you...?"

"Jody," she supplied, her blurry vision clearing to reveal Tyler standing in front of the dais.

"Jody, for your enlightening words," the pastor finished as Jody got off the dais and allowed Tyler to walk her back to their seats. She didn't need him to do that—she was never the damsel in distress type and was usually too proud to accept any help, even from him—but she appreciated the gesture all the same.

As the pastor moved onto the next part of the service, Jody rested her head on Tyler's shoulder and he, in turn, placed his arm around her back, pulling her in. Throughout the rest of the service, Luke and Kingsley didn't look back at her again.

.:. QK .:.

Following the 'farewell', the pastor led the pallbearers and mourners outside to the cemetery. Jody watched on as the pallbearers—Luke being one of them—prepared to lower the coffin into the ground. She turned to Tyler, immensely grateful for his unwavering support. She didn't realise she was perhaps gazing at him in a lovestruck manner until his eyes found hers and he lightly asked her 'what?'.

"Nothing," she answered, blushing. She was at her mother's funeral, for God's sake! "Just... thanks for coming here with me."

"It was either me or Ryan," he quipped before wincing. "Sorry."

She smiled, supposing that he was apologising for making a joke at a funeral. "I mean it. If it wasn't for you, Mike and May-Li, I would've stayed at home and missed out on my chance to say goodbye." She turned back to the procession to see that the coffin was being lowered into the ground. "You were right," she confessed, digging into the pocket of her jacket and pulling out the photo she'd tried to burn two days prior. "She was practically haunting me because I sort of didn't want to let go. I guess I didn't want to stop being angry at her just in case I... started missing her."

Her eyes watered up again as she looked at the photo. She hadn't torn it back when Tyler had left it to her in the garden—it hadn't seemed right—and now she understood why. This photo didn't belong to her, or to Luke, or to Kingsley. It belonged to the one who'd had it taken in the first place in an effort to preserve the image of her perfect family. That perfect family didn't exist—it never had—and nor did Denise Jackson, not anymore, so it was only fitting that the photo should remain with her.

Walking towards the edge of the freshly dug grave, Jody threw the photo on top of the coffin and stood there as a wave of relief washed over her. In a way, Denise's death had set her free; her death signalled the end of the failure that was the Jackson family, allowing those who remained to go their separate ways. She stepped back a little as unshed tears spilt out of her eyes.

"It's okay to miss her, you know," she heard Tyler say as he joined her in front of the grave. "You did love her, once."

"I think I still do," she divulged, her voice trembling. "A little bit, deep down in my heart, you know?" She knew she sounded so soppy but she hoped that he would let it slide just this once.

"Yeah, I know," he responded softly, sweeping her up in a hug. She continued to cry her eyes out as he held her, feeling as if she'd reached some sort of milestone. She was officially an orphan, now.

"Miss Jackson?"

Jody almost jumped, reluctantly pulling away from Tyler to see her mother's neighbour standing next to them.

"It's Miss Gray," she corrected, a tad irritated at being interrupted. Couldn't the old crone see that she was busy?

"Oh, sorry. Your brothers are Jacksons so I thought"—she seemed to realise that she'd interrupted something as Tyler made himself scarce—"never mind. Sorry to interrupt but I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am. If I realised that Denise was abusing you, I would've done something to help you."

Jody instantly felt guilty for inwardly cursing the woman. "It's okay," she said, attempting to smile. "That was a long time ago. When you saw me visit her, the worst she did was call me a few names."

"Oh," the woman let out, appearing somewhat relieved. "Still, I'm sorry. No one should have to go through what you did." She patted Jody on the back before looking at her watch. "Goodbye, Miss Gray."

"Err, bye," Jody replied as the woman walked off, turning to go and find Tyler when Kingsley approached her with his accompanying officer in tow.

"Gray?" he almost spat, an angry expression on his face.

Jody recoiled at his attitude, relieved that he was in handcuffs. "Hello to you, too, Kingsley!" she sniped in return, crossing her arms.

"What's Gray ever done for us?!" he asked, letting out a hollow laugh. "Look around! He's not even here!"

"Well, what have any of you ever done for me, Kingsley?!" she retorted, anger rising in her. "Besides breaking my heart a million times, of course!"

Kingsley stepped forward then, looking like he was going to try to intimidate her like he used to when she was little, when the officer placed a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back. "No physical contact, Jackson!" he warned. "Behave or we leave now!"

"Yeah, yeah, alright," Kingsley muttered dismissively. Luke and Tyler both joined the fray, the latter coming straight to Jody's side.

"Nice to see you, Kingsley," Tyler greeted flatly. Kingsley didn't respond, clenching his fists.

"Why are you letting him talk to my sister?" Luke questioned the officer. "She almost died because of him!" Jody exchanged a look with Tyler. Why was Luke showing concern for her now when he hadn't bothered to reach out to her in months?

"I wasn't aware of that but thanks for letting me know," the officer answered, escorting a smouldering Kingsley away.

Luke turned to the pair of teenagers. "Are you coming to the wake?"

"We can't; Tyler's got an exam this afternoon," Jody responded truthfully. Tyler had a history exam at one and if they didn't leave soonish, he'd miss it.

Luke seemed to understand that Tyler not being able to attend the wake meant that Jody wouldn't be able to either. He nodded, about to say something but apparently thinking better of it after glancing warily at Tyler.

"I'll go and call Mike so he can pick us up," Tyler excused himself, obviously sensing that Luke wanted him out of the way. Jody considered stopping him— _she_  didn't want him to leave—but ultimately let him go.

"What did you do that for?!" she interrogated. "Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of Tyler."

"Sorry, I just..." Luke trailed off, glancing at Tyler who was standing off to the side. "He's obviously really protective of you and I didn't want him to take anything I'm about to say the wrong way."

"And what are you about to say?"

"That I made a mistake. That I didn't treat my little sister the way she deserves... My uni friends, they're—"

"Not here," she cut in, holding her arms out. Luke had been by himself during the entire service. "Are they really worth it at all if not even one of them is here for you today?"

"They don't know that I'm here," he admitted sheepishly. "They think Mum died ages ago."

She scoffed. Even she didn't lie about that. What lies had he told his mates about her? That she was a goody two shoes? A girly girl? Or that she didn't even exist? "So you're pretending to be someone else?"

"Jody, I"—he scratched the back of his head—"I'm glad you have people like Mike, May-Li and Tyler watching your back."

At the mention of her best friend, she sought him out to see that he was still standing near the cemetery exit, patiently waiting for her. She remembered his upcoming exam and the potential cramming time he'd given up just to come here with her despite her insisting that he didn't have to. Finally, she could agree with something Luke was saying.

"So am I," she stated, turning back to her mother's youngest son. "When Mum hurt me for the last time, I finally realised that I don't need any of you."

"Jo—"

"No," she interjected in an almost whisper, sadly shaking her head. She felt like she was coming to the long overdue end of a chapter. "Have a nice life far far away from both me and our idiot brother, Luke."

Steeling herself, Jody spun on her heel and walked towards the exit, ignoring Luke's calls.  _That_  part of her life was well and truly over.

.:. QK .:.

After they dropped Tyler off at school with twenty minutes to spare, Mike and Jody returned to Ashdene Ridge to find several kids loitering around in the lobby.

Floss, having no tact at all, marched up to Jody and straight up asked if she'd cried a lot. Mike shooed her off before the other younger ones could join in and bombard Jody with more uncomfortable questions. He quickly cleared the lobby before ducking into his office.

Just then, Ryan strode into the lobby, a pompous expression on his face.

"So, the criminal's been buried then?" he taunted, smirking.

Rather than speechlessly withstanding his abuse like she had last time, Jody saw red and stomped towards Ryan, landing a punch squarely on his nose. He cried out and clutched his nose as the others came flooding into the lobby like they'd been snooping on them, some visibly shocked but some hiding smiles behind their hands.

"My mum may have been an ex-convict," she stated as Mike popped his head around the office door, gaping at Ryan's nose. "But she was  _my_  mum. No one else has the right to say anything about her, especially not you!"

"Go Jody!" someone cheered but she couldn't tell who which was just as well because Mike looked livid.

Jody smirked back at Ryan before walking to the stairs, stopping next to the lounge door as May-Li exited it. "I know, I know. Grounded forever for causing three nosebleeds within like two weeks." She redirected her gaze towards Ryan. "But definitely worth it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Do your worst, extreme Ryan lovers. He was a nasty piece of work right up until his penultimate episode and I am not afraid to point that out. I mean, all of the kids in the DG are horrible to others at some point, Jody included, but they're usually already upset or angry when they hurt others whereas Ryan says awful things out of nowhere for no reason. I fully believe he'd say something like this to a bereaved fellow child in care, especially the child of an ex-convict.**
> 
> **Also, I'm not saying that violence is the solution to bullying (which is exactly what Ryan is, like it or not) but sometimes people really need a good slap/punch/kick.**


	7. Chapter 7

"Can you believe Dex?" Sasha asked, her voice mired with irritation as she stuffed some clothes into her suitcase. "He was supposed to come here and help me pack but instead he's hanging out with the boys!"

"At least he's here, Sash," Jody replied somberly from her perch on top of the chest of drawers, swinging her legs as she peered around the increasingly bare room. "Some of us are constantly let down by our brothers." She looked back at Sasha who was regarding her in a strange manner.

"What is up with you, today? I mean, besides the obvious."

Jody bit her lip, debating whether to tell the truth or not. The truth was that not only was she upset that her closest female confidante was moving out but she was lowkey jealous that Sasha was getting everything that she'd been denied: a mum who wouldn't let her down, a decent man for a stepdad and two brothers who loved her. After all, what was the difference between her and Sasha? They were both stubborn, temperamental Year Tens (Sasha was fifteen, Jody wasn't) who had been disappointed by their respective mothers and unwanted by them at one point. If her mother and brother had made real attempts at cleaning up their acts, Jody would've been in Sasha's place right now (assuming her mother stayed alive and managed to make it work with Grant). Seeing it happen to someone close to her stung, especially now that such a scenario was impossible for her.

Eventually, Jody settled for the truth mixed in with a lie. "I'm just a little down since, you know. She's officially been gone for two weeks today. I keep wondering about the what-ifs."

Sasha's face softened. "You'll always have us, Jody," she stated, approaching the chest of drawers, "... is what I would say if I was a soppy old sod!" She smacked one of Jody's legs out of the way before opening a drawer and yanking rarely seen dresses and skirts out.

"Aren't you?" Jody questioned, wagging her eyebrows. Sasha stopped what she was doing, narrowing her eyes at her. "Candi might've told me about the beach."

"I am going to kill her," Sasha said dryly, continuing to pack. "Did Tyler actually end up bringing you back some rock that day?"

"No," Jody answered, rolling her eyes. "He forgot. Apparently, he was too busy hanging out with Ryan."

Their eyes met just then and they both sniggered. Ryan was still (emotionally) sore after the punch and glared at Jody literally every time they crossed paths. She found it funny— _she_  was the one who was suffering the most because of the lengthy grounding sentence she'd received—although she was a little concerned that he hadn't tried to get back at her for it yet. That wasn't like him at all.

"Oh, well, we all know Tyler's going to get you that all-important rock in about, oh," Sasha teased, stroking her chin in mock thought, "five to ten years."

"Shut up!" Jody hissed, peering out of the doorway to see if anyone was listening. Floss and Taz's room was just across the hall!

Sasha sighed, putting her hands on her hips. "When are you going to tell him?" Jody didn't have to ask Sasha to clarify what exactly she was talking about—she understood her perfectly well. Knowing that their conversation had steered into the serious (read: dangerous) territory, she kicked the door shut.

"Never!" she exclaimed, crossing her arms and looking away.

"Why not? What have you got to lose?"

Jody almost exploded. She hated that question, the same one Candi-Rose had naively asked her a year ago.  _What have you got to lose?_  Only everything she'd built up with Tyler ever since she'd gone into care. Friendship, trust, affection.  _Everything_.

"Oh, I don't know, my best friend of six years?!" she nearly yelled. She lowered her voice, remembering that Sasha's room was located in possibly the most snoop-worthy corridor of the whole house. "Besides, he doesn't feel that way about me. I'm just one of the guys to him." Sasha just stared at her like she was stupid. "What?!"

"You are so blind," Sasha stated, shaking her head in... disgust. "Tell me, is Tyler into guys?"

"Uhh... no." Chanelle, Sophie, and all of the others Tyler had fancied over the years were all female. She'd certainly never seen him show any interest of that kind in the boys at school and she would know; she spent a worrying amount of time gazing at him.

"Well then why does he flirt with you? If you're such a guy, and everything."

Jody raised an eyebrow. "He doesn't."

"What about yesterday?" Sasha prompted, giving her a pointed look. Jody just furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "You know, outside the office?"

 _Oh_. She had to refrain from giggling uncharacteristically (which was becoming an increasingly frequent occurrence where Tyler was concerned). Just the day before, Tyler had said something to make her blush as they waited to beg May-Li to unground her early but that had obviously been a joke. He never flirted with her for real. He must've spotted Floss spying on them or something and decided to give her a free episode of her favourite show—the (DG dubbed) 'Jyler' show.

"That was a joke," she explained. "He jokes around with everyone. That's just what he does!"

"Well, he doesn't  _joke_  with any of us. Not like that, anyway." Sasha wrinkled her nose before adding, "The jokes he tells me are  _so_  dead."

"That's not nice, Sasha," Jody admonished, biting her lip as she reminisced about Tyler trying to cheer her up shortly after the funeral by riding the old trike that was usually stored away in the shed. She'd watched from her window as he rode straight into the vegetable patch and fell flat on his face. It was hilarious. "I think he's funny."

"Well, obviously you think he's funny. You're in love with him, you have to!"

Jody's heart almost seized as a cold sweat rushed through her. "Wh—What?" she stammered, her friend's words floating around in her head.  _In love_. No...! She cared for Tyler, fancied him, and maybe even loved him in a strictly platonic sense, but she definitely wasn't  _in love_! "Love doesn't exist, Sasha!" she blurted out, her palms becoming sweaty. "Not  _that kind_ , anyway, and even if it does, it definitely doesn't  _work_! If it did, most of us wouldn't be here!"

"You don't know that!" Sasha retorted, clearly affronted. "Look, I'm not trying to be mushy or anything, but my mum and Kev love each other."

"No offence, Sash, but those two have only been together for, what, three years? Who knows if they'll still be together by the time your sister's old enough to be dumped here!"

Almost straight away, Jody knew she'd said completely the wrong thing because Sasha just shook her head at her, not even appearing to be angry. If anything, she just looked disappointed. Without having to be told to leave, Jody leapt off the chest of drawers and rushed out of Sasha's room, heading straight for her own.

.:. QK .:.

Following a couple of hours of moping around in her bedroom and a half hour of listening to Tyler try to convince her to go out into the garden with him, Jody reluctantly caved in. She didn't particularly want to see him, not after what Sasha had claimed, but she couldn't be bothered to ignore him and then come up with a bogus explanation as to why. This was one of the many times she wished that she'd never realised that she had these stupid feelings in the first place. Life would've been so much easier if she hadn't.

"You win, Tyler!" she declared before opening the door to find a grinning Tyler standing right outside. She tried to look anywhere but his face but failed miserably, involuntarily smiling back at him. God, did she feel like a total airhead right now. Another day of this and she'd literally turn into one of Candi-Rose's hare-brained rom-com heroines.

"I knew I would," he replied, holding up his garden gloved hands. "Unfortunately, cause you're grounded and everything, the most exciting thing we can do is weed the vegetable patch."

"Yippee!" she rejoiced sarcastically, nonetheless motioning for him to lead the way.

When they got downstairs, however, Jody found herself face to face with the last person she wanted to see. She instantly turned to Tyler, wondering if he'd coaxed her out for  _this_ , but he merely shrugged at her, appearing to be as surprised as she felt. He never could lie to her, ever since they were small, so she let her suspicions slide and turned back to her unwanted visitor.

"Why are you here?" she questioned tiredly, too emotionally drained to truly get angry. Her mother's recent funeral, Sasha's imminent departure, and her unsettling talk with said girl had stripped her of her wits. "I told you to go off and live your life."

Luke held up his hands, a sincerely remorseful expression on his face. "I just came here to see how you're doing. I, err, phoned your social worker and he said it was fine."

Jody looked to Mike, who was standing next to Luke, for confirmation and received a reassuring nod. She sighed inwardly. She only had herself to blame for this; she never got round to telling her social worker that she didn't want anything to do with her family because she'd been so busy trying to erase them from her mind and had forgotten about informing her social worker altogether after her mother had died. Had Luke not shown up today, she might've never remembered.

"Yeah, well, I was fine up until I saw you," she countered, exchanging an annoyed look with Tyler. Okay, so she was lying, but she wasn't about to take Luke aside and tell him that she was  _not fine_  because she'd been straight up told that she was in love with her best friend. "I'll let my social worker know that I want nothing to do with you from now on."

"Jody, is there nothing I can do to make this right?" Luke implored, his words tugging at something in Jody's heart. She blinked rapidly, hating herself for her weak heart. "You're my little sister."

"Err, maybe we should take this inside?" Mike suggested, making Jody aware of the crowd forming in the lobby. However, she didn't fancy going into the quiet room—the conversation she wanted to end ASAP would only get longer if she did.

"Why did you forget that then?" she asked hoarsely, holding her arms out. She could've got over the months of silence if he'd reached out to her during Christmas, but he simply hadn't. "You didn't send me anything for Christmas, not even a text!"

"I wanted to," Luke responded, wringing his hands together. "I just couldn't. My girlfriend, she gets suspicious whenever she sees the contact number of another woman on my phone. I hadn't got round to telling her or any of my mates that I have a sister so if she saw your name in my contacts list, she would've—"

"Wait, so you deleted my number?!" she cried, unable to listen to him anymore. "And you must've deleted all of my old messages too!" Luke averted his gaze towards the floor, confirming his guilt. Jody scoffed. She'd never heard such a stupid explanation before in her entire life. Since when were girlfriends more important than sisters? Since when did Luke even have a girlfriend?! "I can't"—she looked apologetically at Tyler—"I can't listen to this crap anymore!"

A gasp went around the lobby, presumably at the use of a swear word, and May-Li had to physically force the unwelcome spectators into the lounge.

"Jody!" Tyler called, but she was already halfway up the stairs, intending to go back to her room and stay there until it was time for Sasha to go. "Oh, well done!" she heard him exclaim, the sarcasm dripping from his voice. "You really know how to kick her when she's already down!"

Seeing Luke peer up at her pleadingly, Jody almost wavered but then recalled her decision to leave the Jacksons behind. He was a Jackson. She was a Gray. There was nothing left to be said between the two of them.

.:. QK .:.

Lying on her bed under the covers, Jody sniffed as the events of the day weighed down on her and replayed over and over in her troubled mind. She didn't want to think about any of it, not about being in love, losing her closest female friend, being pushed aside by her brother for some girlfriend she'd never heard of, but she couldn't help it. If she didn't pay a visit to the gym soon—as soon as she was ungrounded—she was going to go crazy.

A knock on the door roused her from her thoughts. She threw the covers off from over her head, peering over at the door.

"What?" she called. "Come in..."

The door opened and in walked Sasha, holding the book Jody had stolen from her during the Kingsley fiasco. Jody sat up, wiping at her eyes, not wanting Sasha to see that she'd maybe been crying. Today was about Sasha Bellman moving onto the next part of her life, not Jody Gray engaging in yet another episode of wallowing in her perpetual self-pity.

"Hey," Sasha greeted softly, seemingly out of her spirits. She sat down on the edge of the bed without asking first—come to think of it, she'd never asked her for permission before, not even once. "I came to give you this," she stated needlessly, handing Jody the book.

Gracefully accepting the book, Jody flipped to the front page and read the personal message written by the original owner out loud. It was nothing new—she'd read the message shortly before she'd nearly died—but something about the book and message felt different now, especially since the soon-to-leave-care current owner was  _giving_  it to her.

"I'm not really into fairytales anymore," she commented, drawing a small smile from Sasha, "but thanks."

"Tee gave it to me when she left and she told me to give it to someone else when I was found. Maybe it can become a tradition. Tee was found. I'm found. One day, you'll be found."

Jody nodded, wondering if she'd ever truly be found. The reality of living in care was that a care kid was forced to be found by the time they were eighteen, whether they were content with where they were going or not. "Sasha, I'm sorry for what I said about your mum and your stepdad. What would I know about relationships? They'll probably make the distance."

"Probably. But even if they don't, at least they followed their hearts. At least they gave it a shot. Kev's a decent guy—nothing like my dad or Murphy's. I know he'll be there for my sister no matter what happens with him and my mum."

"Is that what you're doing?" Jody inquired, tipping her head to the side. "Are you following your heart?"

"Yeah," Sasha replied with a nod, her smile growing wider. "Leaving this place is going to be one of the hardest things I'll ever have to do—don't tell anyone I said that—"—she gave Jody a warning glare—"but I know that I want to be with my family."

"Following my heart's only ever led to trouble," Jody confessed. "I followed my heart when I went to live with Mum again and things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. I followed my heart when Kingsley got out of prison and that ended in total disaster. I followed my heart when Mum dangled a new life with Grant in front of my face and..." she trailed off, realising she was making Sasha's big day all about herself. "Sorry, I'm prattling on."

"Nah, it's okay," Sasha dismissed with a wave of the hand, being surprisingly... nice. "I don't leave every day so I'll let it slide."

"Soppy old Sasha...!" Jody said quietly, too out of it to singsong but just about spirited enough to not let the opportunity to tease Sasha slip.

"Don't you call me soppy, Jody Gray!" Sasha exclaimed, mock outraged. She let out a sad laugh then, her features softening. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry too. I know just as much about love and relationships as you do. My dad only stuck around until Dex started nursery and was totally wrong for my mum—I can still remember them stupid rows—, Murphy's dad made a run for it before he was even born, and I barely knew Mum's other loser boyfriends. I haven't been in love myself—I like Josh but it's definitely not love—so I shouldn't have said what I did about you and Tyler."

"I think we're a little too young to be in love with anyone, to be honest," Jody pointed out, shivering a little. Falling in love, like other scary grown-up notions, could wait. There were  _way_  more important things for girls their age to worry about like hanging out with their friends, doing well in school and deciding what they wanted to do with their lives. Yep, that horribly complicated stuff could definitely wait.

"For once, I think you're actually right!"

Jody cracked a smile, feeling a lot lighter than she had before Sasha had walked in. In fact, she felt even better than she had at the beginning of the day, at least regarding Sasha's departure. She put the Peter Pan book down, looking at the one who'd officially passed it on to her.

"I'll miss you, Sash."

Sasha smiled back, her eyes suspiciously sparkly. "I'll miss you too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Weird ending, I know, but I already wrote Jody saying an emotionally charged goodbye in the previous chapter and I really didn't want to do it again.**
> 
> **Just a few things regarding Sasha. I don't dislike her or anything but her storyline in S6E5 made no sense, at least not to me. See, someone like Floss who has no known family out there deciding to stay at the DG over the chance at a family is one thing but Sasha, a girl who has a whole family she loves, choosing to do so is bonkers. I kind of felt upset when I remembered Sasha's second episode where we saw how much she loved her brothers and then the other episode where she wanted to move back in with her mum to be a part of her sister's life. There was also no indication that she maybe didn't want to move in with her mum until S6E5 itself! It felt so random like it was shoehorned into the script at the last minute. So, yeah, in this fic, she moves out in that episode.**
> 
> **Another thing that really bothers me is Sasha's age. In S5 (I think), Mike tells Sasha to behave like a responsible adult so when I watched that series, I thought Sasha was about 16. However, in S7, she's only just attending a college open day which means she can't be any older than 16 in S7, right? But then that means that her thing with Josh in S5 was basically illegal; he had to be at least 16 to be a trainee plumber (amirite?) and he apparently dropped out of a degree in S7. I just don't get how they thought that showing a kiss between a 15 y/o (at most) girl and a 16+ y/o boy or man was appropriate, especially in a show like this. AFAIK, there are no Romeo and Juliet laws in the UK.**
> 
> **Moving on, it's a headcanon of mine that Murphy is Sasha and Dexter's half brother. There seems to be quite a gap between Dexter and Murphy (not that full sibs can't have big age gaps) and Sasha's comment to her mum about guys never sticking around seemed to back that up. If Sasha and Murphy had the same dad, he would've had to have been with their mum for about ten years and, if that were the case, surely Sasha would've mentioned him at least once? Even just to say that he walked out when Murphy was a baby or something?**


	8. Chapter 8

Twelve days after punching Ryan, Jody was finally ungrounded but only because Mike and May-Li were one hundred per cent focused on disciplining the two boys who'd almost cost the latter her job and welcoming a new resident. As it happened, Jody's first outing since her release wasn't to the park or somewhere even remotely fun but to the local supermarket with the least fun person in the whole house. That was how she found herself hiding in the crisps aisle, staring at the Sensations she desperately wanted to buy but wasn't allowed to.

"Jody!" Charlie called, interrupting Jody's relative solace and pushing a trolley full of healthy food towards said girl. "We can't buy this bottle of cola. Please put it back."

"It's just one bottle," Jody pointed out, unwilling to budge. She wasn't putting it back. Mike and May-Li hadn't bought drinks other than squash and various different fruit juices in weeks. She was suffering from withdrawal.

"It's out of our budget," Charlie stated matter of factly, leaning over the trolley handle to pick the one-litre bottle of cola up.

Jody stubbornly crossed her arms. "Swap it for that awful squash then!"

"I can't! It's on the shopping list!"

Glancing at Charlie who was still reaching for the cola, Jody leaned over the other side of the trolley and grabbed the bottle of squash. She couldn't stand the stuff but Joseph and Archie were massive fans. Too bad. It wasn't anything they couldn't go a week without. She, however, had to get that cola or World War III would break out when she got back home.

"Jody..." Charlie trailed off warningly, now holding the cola bottle. "Put that down..."

Without another word, Jody bolted off towards the drinks aisle, an annoyed Charlie calling after her. Rounding the corner, she looked back to see Charlie chasing her with the trolley in tow and turned back just in time to narrowly avoid bumping into a random child. Ugh, children. The supermarket was always teeming with children of all shapes and sizes on the weekends which was one of the reasons she hadn't wanted to come here in the first place but Alex had been busy and Ryan had a good excuse for not wanting to leave the house, leaving her to become Charlie's unhappy companion. Just as she rounded the corner to the drinks aisle, one of those evil children walked straight into her path and the next thing she knew, both the bottle of squash and the child—a boy of about ten—were on the floor.

 _Great_. Jody felt the urge to run straight out of the supermarket but restrained herself, knowing that such an action would lead to her being grounded again once Charlie reported back to Mike and May-Li. She awkwardly stood to the side, mumbling an apology as onlookers helped the boy up, spotting a security guard making his way over to them.

"What... happened...?" Charlie panted, stopping the trolley next to Jody as she tried to catch her breath. Jody raised an eyebrow; she and Brandon could do much more than that at the gym without breaking a sweat.

"He just appeared out of nowhere," she muttered under her breath as the security guard reached the scene.

"What's going on here?" he interrogated, a stern expression on his face as he towered over Jody and the boy. He had to be at least six foot tall. "Son, are you okay?"

"That girl ran into me!" the boy exclaimed, pointing his finger accusingly at Jody as if she was a criminal. The action reminded her of an eerily similar situation back when her old neighbours had accused her mother and brothers of assault in front of the police.

"Think this is a playground, do you?" the guard asked, looking his nose down at her like most outsiders did when they found out she was in care. "Little old for running amok, aren't you?"

"It was an accident," she said through gritted teeth, attempting to stand her ground. She hated that demeaning look, even though she knew the guard wasn't doing it for the usual reason.

"Benji!" a woman called, running over to the boy and hugging him.

"Mum, that girl pushed me!"

Jody clenched her fists. What a lying little rat! "I didn't push you, you little...!"

The boy's mother glowered at her, releasing her son and menacingly stepping towards Jody. "How  _dare_  you talk to my son like that?!"

"Your son is a  _liar_!" Jody retorted, pushing past the guard to match the woman's step.

The security guard stepped in between them, appearing to be a little out of his depth. "Ladies, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the store if you can't stop shouting."

"Jody, let's just go!" Charlie hissed like the worry wart that she was.

Meanwhile, the woman glared up at the security guard as if he'd sworn at her. "Excuse me! This girl just assaulted my nine-year-old!"

"Assaulted?!" Jody spat, about to show the woman what assault really was when Charlie pulled her back.

"Kingsley!" the woman suddenly barked, startling Jody. "Get over here!"

As 'Kingsley' entered the aisle, Jody almost fainted. Her mind drew a blank as the screeching woman bitched and moaned about her and the security guard right in front of their faces and she vaguely registered Charlie nagging her to go to the checkout with her but all she could do was stare at 'Kingsley', a man who looked so much like  _her_  Kingsley, only much older and obviously not in handcuffs...

.:. QK .:.

That afternoon, Jody sat on the sofa in a state of despondency as the world passed her by. With Tyler out visiting his mum and Sasha living with hers again, she found herself crippled by a sense of loneliness she hadn't experienced in years. There was no one else to talk to here, not really, even those she was closer to than others; Candi-Rose was too much of a loud mouth and Jody didn't feel comfortable approaching Charlie after the supermarket debacle.

"Hey, Charlie told me about what you did at the supermarket!" Jody looked to her right to see Alex sitting next to her, sipping from a glass of cola. "Nice one!"

Jody smiled weakly at her fellow fizzy drink addict but she couldn't bring herself to share his elation at her supermarket victory. The only reason Charlie had bought the cola in direct violation of the shopping list was that she'd been desperate to get Jody out of the supermarket as soon as possible. Knowing Charlie, it was only a matter of time before Mike and May-Li summoned Jody to their office for a serious chat.

As if on cue, Floss strode in and told Jody that May-Li wanted to see her. Jody sighed, getting up and walking out of the lounge to see May-Li standing in the lobby. To her surprise, the carer smiled warmly at her and beckoned her over. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Either Charlie hadn't said anything to Mike and May-Li or the latter was the best actress ever.

"Err, Floss said you wanted to see me," Jody said, coming to a stop in front of her carer.

"Err, yes," May-Li said, checking the time on her watch. "The new resident we were supposed to be welcoming today isn't coming here after all—she's being put straight into a semi-independent flat—so we can go to the gym now, if you like."

Jody refrained from sighing in relief. For some reason, Charlie hadn't said a single thing about what had happened earlier, at least to May-Li; if she had, Jody would've been grounded by now.

"Sure," she replied, digging her hands into her pockets. She couldn't wait to get to the gym and let loose on those punching bags. "I'll just go and get my stuff together."

"Okay, I'll be waiting outside."

.:. QK .:.

Fifteen minutes later, Jody found the sweet relief she'd been craving all day in destroying the punching bag she regarded as a suitable substitute for Kingsley's face. After the funeral, she'd thought she was finally shot of the Jackson brothers and their dramatics but Luke had shown up and disrupted her fresh start with his stupid, offensive excuses. After she flat out rejected Luke, she thought she'd never see him or another Jackson again but she'd been proven wrong once more. Only, she was quite sure it wasn't a Jackson she'd seen in the supermarket, not unless she was suddenly living in a sci-fi movie featuring timewarps. No... her Kingsley didn't have greying hair, a partner or a nine-year-old son. But she knew a Kingsley who probably did.

She cried out, swinging relentlessly at the punching bag, recalling the way 'Kingsley' had fought the security guard in order to get Jody arrested for what his partner called assault. Assault. She despised the word. Assault was the reason her family had broken up in the first place, not that they'd been a great family to begin with. She recalled the way 'Kingsley' had looked straight at her but hadn't recognised her as she'd recognised him, regarding her as little more than a stranger in the drinks aisle as he fought on behalf of the child he hadn't walked out on.

Why? Why? Why? What was so special about that boy—Benji—that 'Kingsley' had stuck around for his first words, his first steps, his first day at school? What did she lack? Why hadn't she had that privilege? Instead, she'd been stuck with the wrong Kingsley as the primary male figure in her life for nearly nine years. She'd been wronged! She'd been grievously wronged!

"Jody?" she heard May-Li call, flinching as a hand came to rest on her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"Err, nothing," she replied faintly, realising she was soaking in her own sweat. "I just got..." she gulped, the words sticking in her incredibly dry throat, "I got a little carried away."

"I haven't seen you this active since..." Since the first time she'd gone to the gym after her mother's death.

Jody dropped her hands just then, shaking her head. A one time encounter with a man she couldn't remember from her childhood and the death of the mother she'd loved all her life were hardly the same thing. What the hell was wrong with her? Why was she so bothered by this?

"I think I just need some water," she told May-Li, taking her boxing gloves off and wiping her forehead with the back of one hand. Her skin was hot to the touch, something that only happened when she was overexerting herself.

As she sat down on a bench and drank from the water bottle May-Li had fetched for her, she thought long and hard about family. She'd survived her mother's death and her brothers' betrayals and had reconciled herself to the fact that there was no forever family out there for her. When she'd managed to deal with all that, it was no wonder that she'd got through thirteen years without a father. Why would she need or even want one now?

The name Gray would only serve as a fresh start for her as long as it wasn't tainted by association with yet another deadbeat family member. Her head knew that but her heart... her heart was another matter entirely.

No matter how much the rational part of her mind was telling her to drop her deep-seated daddy issues before she got in too deep, Jody reached for her phone as if on autopilot and went straight to Google. The name practically typed itself.  _Kingsley Gray._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'm concerned that the way Jody ran into 'Kingsley' was far too similar to how Alex met his mother in S6E6. I was going to have them meet a different way but it kinda turned into this. I don't know... I don't feel good about it.**


	9. Chapter 9

_Kingsley Gray, Manchester._

Nope.

 _Kingsley Gray, London_.

Nope.

_Kingsley Gray, Los Angeles, California._

No...

_Kingsley Gray, Asaba, Nigeria._

_Definitely_  no.

There were six more Kingsley Grays but they all had no details or profile pictures. Jody sighed, hanging her head in her hands. Facebook was another disappointment in a long string of dead-end social media sites. So far, her two-day search had been unfruitful.

A gentle rap of the knuckles on her bedroom door made her jump and scramble to hide the evidence of her private searches on the laptop. Closing down the incognito window on Chrome, she quickly pulled up a YouTube boxing video on a normal window just as Tyler walked in.

"Alright?" he asked, probably reading the panic that was almost certainly written all over her face.

"Yeah," she replied, beaming at him. "What's up?"

"Just finished reading my book," he answered, snickering as he sat down on the edge of her bed. "May-Li's flat out avoiding me because she thinks I'll spoil it for her again." Jody giggled. She couldn't believe that Tyler's and May-Li's reading tastes were so similar that the former was at risk of spoiling yet another book series for the latter.

"What happened at the end of that one with the long title again?" she questioned, selecting another boxing video because she'd already seen the one she'd hastily pulled up. "I remember you said the staff got stolen or something."

"Yeah, and the King gave his throne up to be with the woman he loved."

Jody refrained from snorting. Only in a book would a man give up his throne for love. In real life, men only gave up their families for love (read: sex). Of course, she didn't know for sure why some of the other residents' dads had walked out on them but her own had probably left for the woman who'd screamed assault at her the other day.

"No one would actually do that," she commented, trying to imagine someone giving up that level of power and money just to be in a relationship with someone. She just couldn't picture it, especially not in today's greedy world.

Tyler raised an eyebrow. "Except somebody did. Edward the eighth. He gave the throne up to marry his mistress."

Edward VIII? She only knew Henry VIII and everyone knew how many wives he'd bumped off just to keep the English throne in his family. Anyway, Tyler was the one who took History as a GCSE; she didn't have a clue about the subject beyond what she'd learnt in school up until Year Eight.

"Sorry, I guess I just don't believe in all of that mushy stuff," she stated, not wanting to sound too cynical. It'd taken her over three weeks just to get to the point where she could laugh and smile freely again and she didn't want to end up dragging herself back into that dark place—the limbo between numbness and heavily suppressed emotion that she'd found herself stuck in after her mother's death. Maybe looking for Kingsley Gray wasn't such a good idea, at least not until she was ready to deal with more heartbreak.

"Trust me, I know you don't," Tyler responded, reminding her of their conversation. "But you've never told me why. Maybe because we don't really talk about that stuff..." he suddenly trailed off, looking down and scratching the back of his neck.

 _Not this again_. Jody bit her lip, feeling downright weird as the mood of the atmosphere in her room shifted. This sort of thing did happen from time to time, like when she sat a little too close to him on the sofa or when they smiled at each other for a little too long, but after her last talk with Sasha in this very room, she'd made up her mind to move past all that. What teenager didn't develop a crush on a classmate or friend? She'd even had a little thing for Bailey a few years back but it'd dissipated pretty quickly because of how mean he was to her. Since Tyler wasn't mean to her and was her best friend, it was obviously taking a little longer for the crush to go away... but it'd happen eventually, wouldn't it?

She had to get a grip; she couldn't let a crush dictate how they acted towards each other. Her feelings had to be painfully obvious if they were making him feel like he couldn't talk to her about certain things and that was the last thing she wanted. They were best friends. They were supposed to be able to talk about  _anything_.

She felt a pang of guilt just then; she hadn't told him about what'd happened at the supermarket yet. She was reneging on the 'promise' she'd made to him about not shutting him out. She couldn't keep doing this... it only made the ever-present divide between them grow wider.

"Err, yeah, we don't," she finally said, picking the conversation right back up. "I guess I don't believe in all that because I've never witnessed it," she admitted, remembering her foolish childhood fancies of her parents loving each other and her. "You know, when I started school and saw that other kids had mums  _and_  dads, I wished that my dad would come back and that him and my mum would fall in love again so that all of us could finally be happy. Mum was always mad at me and I thought it was because he wasn't around. It wasn't until she started calling me an accident that I realised that she hated me even more than she hated him. I never thought about him again after that. All the love in the world couldn't have fixed her."

"Come on, you know that she didn't hate you," he spoke in an obvious attempt to lessen her pain. He was right, though. Somewhat.

"Yeah, but she only loved me because of stupid motherly hormones, didn't she? She loved me because I was her daughter, not because of who I am."

"But what if someone does?" he asked, looking up at her in an almost hesitant manner. Her heart skipped a beat. "I mean, what if someone loves you—yeah, in that way—and you love them back? Are you just going to run away from it? You know, just because your parents didn't work out, doesn't mean your relationship won't."

Oh, he was humouring her now. Couldn't he tell that he was the only one she was even remotely interested in? That she was desperately trying to get over him to save their friendship? Or maybe he did know and was trying to tell her that there was someone else out there for her?

"Yeah, well, that won't happen," she countered firmly, nearly spitting the words out. "Can you imagine me with a boyfriend?"

"No, I can't."

She swallowed hard, looking down at her hands, trying to hide her reaction. Those three words stung more than they should've. "Well, that's that then."

"That's not what I meant," he hurriedly added, sounding panicked.

"Well what then?" she snapped, feeling more hurt than she wanted to be as her eyes met his. If this was how she reacted to him telling her he didn't see her as girlfriend material, how would she be able to handle it if he rejected her?

He stared at her for a bit, his face devoid of any emotion, before saying, "Nothing... just nothing."

.:. QK .:.

"Have you and Tyler fallen out?"

Turning to the next page of her homework that was due next period, Jody peered up to see Rosie Kettle taking a seat across the table she'd been sat at for the last good half hour. Her eyes flickered to Tyler who was using the computer situated on the other side of the library before flitting back to Rosie.

"No," she replied, wondering how anyone at school would know that something was up. While the whole school did think they were dating, she and Tyler didn't hang out together at school as much as they did out of hours, preferring to spend time with the friends they didn't see at home seven days a week. "The both of us are just busy. This homework's due after lunch."

"Riiiight," Rosie responded, clearly unconvinced. "He hasn't been told off the entire day. It's a record."

"Maybe he has," Jody muttered dismissively. "You're not in all of his classes."

"Yeah, but I've heard his friends talking about how moody he's been all day and it's not because of his mock results.  _Everyone_  thinks you two broke up."

Typical. The pupils in this school were as bad as Floss (who was going to start high school next year). Jody shuddered. Floss was the biggest Jyler shipper out there and would only make the rumour mill run wild, even all the way from Year Seven. She sighed. If she and Tyler really were a couple, they would've broken up by now. They were barely talking. For once, he was the one who was acting off with her, not the other way around, and she didn't know what to do about it. When he wouldn't tell her what was wrong, how was she supposed to help him deal with whatever it was that was bothering him? She was also unhappy with his hypocrisy—why was he allowed to shut her out but she had to share everything with him?

"How's your family?" she inquired, not wanting to think about Tyler a second longer. He already occupied her mind for hours on end every single day, especially during class, to the dismay of her teachers (not that they knew what she 'daydreamed' about half the time).

"Great," Rosie answered with a smile and Jody hoped against hope that the other girl would just drop her enquiry about Tyler. "Lily visited us this weekend. She's thinking of moving back here."

Jody raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised. She hadn't seen Lily Kettle in years; the older girl—woman, really—had stopped dropping by Ashdene Ridge when Carmen and Tee moved out. Carmen herself hadn't visited in ages and Tee only came back recently to help with the Umbleby crisis. It seemed like ex-residents died and crossed over to the other side after leaving the DG. That'd be her one day.

"What about her family?" she asked distractedly, discreetly stealing a glance at Tyler.

Would he even talk to her after they left the DG? They'd promised to be best friends forever but how could they when they stopped talking over trivial things while still living in the same house? She didn't even know why he'd been avoiding her for the last couple of days! Would their friendship still be standing by the time they were adults? Or would they simply be two strangers heading off into the big bad world to start their new and very separate lives far far away from each other?

"They're going to stay where they are. Lily only wants to move because she wants to open a cafe here."

"It doesn't even seem like it's been that long since she moved away," Jody commented, sounding like an old lady to her own ears. "I guess we all have to grow up one day." Lily couldn't be any older than nineteen and was already thinking about starting her own business. Where would  _she_  be at nineteen? Where would Tyler be?

"Yeah. You, me and Tyler will all leave care in three years, won't we?"

A shiver ran down her spine. Three years. That wasn't an awful lot of time to get her affairs in order. God, she made it sound like impending death but that was exactly what it felt like.

.:. QK .:.

"Ohhh, I'm so glad it's Friday!" Floss exclaimed dramatically, collapsing on the sofa face first and letting out a contented but muffled sigh.

"You can say that again," Candi-Rose concurred as she padded into the lounge. "I've had breakouts because of all of the stress!"

"What stress?" Ryan scoffed condescendingly. "You're only in Year Eight. Try being in Year Ten!"

"We've got to pick our GCSE options by the end of next week, Ryan," Chloe informed tiredly, wheeling into the room behind her best friend and brother. "They've been bombarding us with info left right and centre."

"I already know what I'm going to pick," Jay—who was still in Year Seven—bragged, standing in the doorway of the lounge with a cocky smirk on his face. "It's not rocket science."

"Nobody cares, mate," Ryan deadpanned like he always did when someone so much as looked at Chloe the wrong way.

Jody watched this entire exchange from atop the pool table, feeling bitter. A girl knew she had rubbish brothers when Ryan looked like Brother of the Year. She hated to admit it but Chloe was  _lucky_ , in a way, because Ryan was obviously always going to be there for her. No matter how rotten he was to everyone else, it was plain as day that he wouldn't use her to help him commit crimes—he could probably do that on his own—and that he wouldn't cut her off for a f***ing girlfriend.

She shook her head. She was doing it again; she was allowing herself to be sucked back into that dark place by thinking about her idiot brothers. She didn't  _need_  them. Why did she keep forgetting that? So lost in her thoughts was she that she didn't notice that Tyler had walked into the lounge and approached the pool table until he spoke up.

"Can we talk?" he asked, rousing her from her thoughts. She nodded, acutely aware that everyone was staring at them. Those who attended high school with the two of them had no doubt heard the gossip about their 'break-up' and she couldn't help but wonder if one of them was responsible for spreading the rumours in the first place.

"Let's go upstairs," she suggested, wanting to get away from the prying eyes.

They silently walked to her room, passing Charlie and Alex _giggling_ together on their way up the stairs. Any other time, she would've shared a funny look with Tyler at something like this but with the way he was acting, she didn't feel like she could do that anymore. The realisation made her feel empty, like she'd lost something dear to her.

Given that the house rules barred boys from girls' rooms and vice versa, her bedroom wasn't really a wise place to have this conversation but Joseph, Archie and Taz were all in the garden and she didn't trust them not to snoop. Besides, no one actually obeyed that rule anyway, least of all the two of them. Once they reached their destination, she hung back and let Tyler into the room before gently closing the door behind her.

"Was it something I did?" she questioned meekly, going to lean against her wardrobe as he stayed where he was near the door. "Or something I said? Like, something stupid?"

"No!" he suddenly piped up, startling her. He laughed nervously then, his face appearing flushed. "I mean, it's not really anything  _you_  said or did. It's, well, it's me."

She blinked. She hadn't expected that. "You? What do you mean?"

"Well, do you ever feel like our friendship's changed?"

The temperature in the room suddenly increased and Jody gulped. This was it. He was going to come out and say that he wasn't comfortable being friends with her anymore and it'd all be her fault. All because she wore her heart on her sleeve and couldn't hide her feelings to save her life—or her friendship. Six years of friendship and this was how it was going to end, all because of a stupid crush.

"I suppose," she said hoarsely, staring at her feet. What else could she do? Lie? No, they were well past that point.

Their friendship wasn't what it used to be and this was no new development. It'd been like this for a couple of years now, ever since that time she thought she was going to lose him to his mum. Back then, her naive twelve-year-old self had thought that she couldn't bear to let him go because he was a sort of substitute for her brothers but Candi-Rose's interference the following year had forced her to open her eyes to the scary truth.

A while after taking that wretched magazine quiz, she'd found that she couldn't quite talk to him like she used to, not in the way she could before they became teenagers, and that that reticence was mutual. He didn't quite treat her with the same ease that he used to and it rattled her. They were still as close as ever—up until the last couple of days anyway—but it just wasn't the same and probably never would be.

"Well, when you mentioned having a boyfriend, it reminded me of all of that stuff that happened with Sophie from the skate park and how it nearly ruined our friendship. I didn't want that to happen again, you know?"

A flood of relief washed through her as she listened to what he had to say and it took everything in her to not let out a massive sigh of relief. He hadn't picked up on her feelings at all. Well, duh, he was a guy. They were all oblivious, weren't they? Wait, was that sexist?

"You didn't have to act all weird around me for days because of that, you idiot!" she admonished, hoping she didn't sound too happy. She looked up at him. "We'll always be mates."

Jody could've sworn she saw a hint of something flash in Tyler's eyes but the moment was so brief that she couldn't tell what it was. "Yeah," he agreed, his voice sounding a little strange. "Mates," he repeated, digging his hands into his pockets and smiling at her, only his smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Are you sure that's all?" she implored, sensing that there was something else wrong. He couldn't have acted so weird, making excuses not to hang out with her, just because he thought her getting a boyfriend would negatively affect their friendship.

"Yeah," he answered quickly, twisting the door handle. "Come on, we'd better get downstairs."

"Err, yeah," she responded, following him out of the door.

Hopefully, there'd be no more drama between the two of them, at least not for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Before it became obvious that Tyler and Jody were going to be the TDG's will they won't they pair, I kind of thought Jody and Bailey were going to become a thing, especially in Series 2 (but when they got older, obviously). I sort of realised it wasn't going to go that way by Series 4... yeah... anyone else? Or is it just me?**
> 
> **I didn't really like this chapter. Hopefully, the next one will be better.**


	10. Chapter 10

"Urggggghhhhh!" Tyler groaned, blowing his nose into the last tissue from the tissue box he'd nicked from Jody's room. He looked a ridiculous sight, curled up in the centre of his bed, surrounded by mountains of used tissues.

"Tyler!" Jody exclaimed, wrinkling her nose in distaste. She'd been listening to him bitch and moan about how ill he was for the last half hour. The household epidemic had really done a number on him. "Lie under the covers!"

"It's too warm!" he whined petulantly, sounding like a child. She frowned at him from the doorway, feeling sorry for him. She wondered how Mike could've caught this flu-like lurgy in March, managing to pass it on to half the DG in a matter of minutes. "Jodyyyyyy..."

She snapped out of her musings. "Yeah?"

"I'm cold now." She sighed, leaving her strict post against the door—she'd been keeping her distance so as not to catch what he had—and rushing to the side of his bed.

"Get under the covers," she ordered sternly, narrowing her eyes at him when he gave her an uncooperative look. She didn't want to look like a frightening witch but if it made him comply with her so that he could get better, she was going to milk it for as long as she could. Seemingly taking her seriously, he shimmied up the bed, resting his head on the pillow and throwing the covers out from underneath his body. Leaning over, she grabbed the covers and brought them up to rest just under his chin. "Rest for now." She straightened her back. "Okay?"

"But our plans?" he piped up, blindly and weakly reaching out for her.

"Cancelled," she responded firmly, giving him a pointed look. He didn't seriously expect them to go out when he was practically a zombie, did he? Although, knowing him, he probably did. He pouted in response and she offered him a sympathetic smile in turn. "Get some sleep," she said softly, gently pushing down his outstretched arm. He mumbled something, turning over onto his side, facing away from her. Taking that as her cue to leave, she quietly left the bedroom, carefully closing the door behind her.

"Jody!" Floss called, bounding around the corner.

Jody glared at the younger girl who was wearing a surgical mask and rubber gloves. "Shh!" She grimaced, hoping Floss hadn't woken Tyler up. "He's ill!" she hissed, guiding Floss around the corner and into the corridor leading to the attic stairs. "What is it?"

"Mike told me to give this to you," Floss answered, holding up the office landline phone wrapped in a tissue. Jody raised an eyebrow at the bizarre, over-the-top measures the girl had taken to protect herself from the 'zombie contagion' before taking the phone from her, sans tissue.

Holding the phone up to her ear, she motioned for the younger girl to scram. For once in her life, Floss did what she was told without argument. "Hi?" Jody greeted unsurely, having forgotten to check the number.

" _Jody?_ " the all too familiar voice spoke. " _Hi, it's Simon._ "

She frowned. Why was her social worker calling her now? Her next scheduled appointment with him wasn't for another few weeks.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, hurrying into her room and closing the door behind her with her back.

" _No, no_ ," he assured, sounding... jolly. " _Actually, Luke got in contact with me. He'd like to see you._ "

"I don't want to see him," she replied automatically, without having to think about it for even a second. She would've been lying if she said her heart hadn't skipped a beat at Simon's words but she had too much to deal with at the moment. She still hadn't tracked down her father or his family—she told herself she was too busy to do it but, in all honesty, she didn't have the bottle—and now her housemates were all coming down with a sickness. "I already told you that after the last time he visited."

" _He calls every week,_ " he stated, his voice serious. " _I felt sorry for him so I thought I'd call you and find out if you'd changed your mind._ "

She rolled her eyes. Was he her social worker or Luke's? Next, he'd be feeling sorry for Kingsley. "I bet his girlfriend dumped him and that's why he's desperate to talk to me now. He never could go long without a woman in his life whether it was me or Mum or someone else..."

Simon sighed audibly. " _Are you sure you don't want to see him?_ "

"Yeah," she answered flatly. "One hundred per cent," she added, using Dexter's catchphrase and injecting some attitude into her tone of voice.

" _Alright. I'll see you at our next meeting._ "

"Hmm, bye," she muttered before hanging up.

Her jaw tightened in irritation. Luke had some nerve, harassing her social worker to arrange a meeting with her after she had expressly told him, to his face, that she never wanted to see him again. She'd managed to more or less completely forget him over the last few weeks but he didn't seem to want to let her go. She needed to get May-Li to take her to the gym, ASAP.

.:. QK .:.

In the end, May-Li never got round to taking Jody to the gym despite agreeing to when first asked due to more pressing matters (apparently painting Jay and Bird's room was suddenly important now, even though they'd moved into Candi-Rose's former room a whole month ago), forcing her to remain indoors with the sick lot; it was far too cold and wet outside to walk to the gym. Walking through the lounge, she dodged a suspiciously directed sneeze from Taz, wondering whether there was a single lurgy-free room on the ground floor. The kitchen seemed to be the best bet; Chloe and Joseph were the only occupants, and they appeared to be perfectly healthy.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her mobile phone and sat down at the dining table on the free side—the other side of the table was occupied by a line of bowls of soup. Chloe and Joseph were rattling about the kitchen, pouring over a newspaper cutting and arguing, but Jody blocked them out, going to the browser and pulling up the search engine. Now that she had nothing to do, she could no longer avoid continuing her search for her paternal relatives; she'd taken a three week break, having decided that she wouldn't be able to handle it if yet another family member shunned her, but curiosity was getting the better of her again. She'd already tried and failed to find a profile for Kingsley Gray, but she hadn't yet tried his youngest son.

_Benji Gray._

She cringed, feeling like a right creep for looking a kid up on social media but, these days, even three-year-olds had mobile phones and kids as young as seven had Instagram and Snapchat. She rolled her eyes as the results came up with the profiles of several full grown Benji Grays from all over the world instead of that annoying nine-year-old she'd knocked over in the local supermarket a few weeks ago. As with Kingsley Gray, her searches were getting nowhere.

_Benjamin Gray._

Benji had to be short for Benjamin, right?  _Wrong._ There were a million Benjamin Grays on the results page and they were all old like Mike. Gray seemed to be even more of a common surname than Jackson.

Speaking of Jackson, she was still sour that Luke had the gall to continue running after her after she'd told him not to. What good was his wanting to know her now? He'd missed his chance. She wasn't naive enough to believe that things could work out between them, anyway. Due to what he did to her for his girlfriend, she couldn't trust him anymore, and where there was no trust, there could be no relationship. A fake, empty one, perhaps, but not a meaningful one; not the type of brother-sister relationship she wanted, and most certainly not the type they once had before he'd ruined everything. He'd let her down big time, just like Kingsley and Denise. A year ago, she would've never thought such a thing possible, but maybe family was one of those things she just wasn't supposed to have.

Now that she thought about it, where did she expect this search for Gray to go? Like Luke, he too had missed his chance, only worse; he'd had thirteen years to find her but he probably hadn't even tried. What did she hope to achieve even if she did find him? His wife or partner, whichever she was, would no doubt be unwelcoming and her rat of a son wouldn't be much better. Without his family's approval, would he bother ruffling their feathers just in order to build a relationship with her? Would he want to anyway, even if his family didn't object? Probably not. After all, if he'd really been interested in knowing her at all, he wouldn't have walked out in the first place.

She closed her search tab, watching the results page for Benjamin Gray disappear before her very eyes. She didn't want to get hurt again. When her maternal family had treated her so horrendously, why would her paternal side be any better?

.:. QK .:.

A half hour later, she was chatting with Charlie in the lobby when May-Li popped her head out of the office. "Jody, can I have a word please?"

"What about?" she inquired warily, noting May-Li's stern tone. Had May-Li somehow found out about her illicit searches? How? On the laptop, she only used incognito windows so that even if someone managed to hack into her account, they'd only find boxing or homework-related searches in her search history. It was foolproof, wasn't it? Besides, the last time she'd done secret searches was three weeks ago. "What've I done?"

"Just come into the office."

Noticing Floss and Taz hanging around in the lobby, Jody exchanged a look with Charlie before following May-Li into the office. "Yeah?"

"I've been watching you and Tyler these last few days," May-Li began, closing the door behind Jody, "and I've noticed some... changes. I should've told you this earlier but in-house relationships aren't allowed."

Her heart sunk into the pit of her stomach. She'd never heard of that rule. It couldn't be true. Rick and Carmen had dated albeit for one day and neither, to her knowledge, had been asked to stop. In fact, neither Mike nor May-Li had mentioned this rule when they could've easily done so during their numerous lectures about boys not being allowed in girls' rooms and vice versa. Perhaps it was new?

"May-Li, I think the lurgy's getting to you," she said matter of factly, her eyes following May-Li as she sat down in her desk chair. "There's nothing going on between me and Tyler. We're just friends."

"So you weren't planning on going on a date today, before Tyler got ill?" May-Li asked, leaning forward.

Oh, that was why Floss was loitering around outside the office?

"No!" Jody exclaimed, crossing her arms. "How can you believe whatever Floss says about me, just like that? She obviously lied to you!"

May-Li let out a long-suffering sigh before sniffing. "Floss didn't tell me anything; rather I heard her and Taz talking about your date. Are you telling me there's no truth to it at all?"

"We did have plans to hang out, but only as friends, like we  _always_ do. We probably would've cancelled because of the weather anyways... I still can't believe you thought we were dating."

"It wasn't just because of what Floss said. You and Tyler _have_ been behaving differently around each other; Mike and I have both noticed."

Jody pursed her lips. May-Li wasn't really wrong. Lately, she'd grown lax about touching Tyler even though she knew that she couldn't allow any feelings either of them might have to displace their friendship.

"Look, it isn't personal," May-Li continued, "so please don't think that it is. I've had this talk with every potential in-house couple in my care."

"Well why were Rick and Carmen allowed to date then?"

May-Li waved her hand dismissively. "Ehh, we all knew that one wasn't going to last..."

"But that's not fair!" Jody complained, her temper flaring. "How do you know who's going to last and who isn't?! The stupid rules don't make any sense, anyway! Why are they there in the first place?!"

"Frankly?" She nodded, wanting to hear the adults' reasoning. "To prevent teen pregnancy."

Oh. She might've known. It still didn't make any sense, though. "What, so girls can't get pregnant if they don't live in the same house as their boyfriends? That's bollocks! It happens to girls who aren't in care all the time!"

"That's true but the chances are dramatically reduced. Two teens from different homes have twice as many eyes on them. They'll be less likely to engage in sexual activity at all."

May-Li spoke as if contraception didn't exist. It was somewhat embarrassing. While Jody was uninterested in sex, at least at this point in her life, it seemed unfair that carers imposed rules on people who could lawfully have sex to prevent them from being able to do it. Mike and May-Li liked to go on about how they tried to treat care kids like any other but it was all talk and no action (literally).

Jody rolled her eyes. "May-Li, you don't have to worry about me getting pregnant. It's never going to happen. Never in a million years."

She was never going to be a mother. Somehow, she'd always known that. Even if she did unfortunately become pregnant, she'd get an abortion. After all, it was better for a child not to come into the world at all than to know that he or she was unwanted.

May-Li looked back at Jody in astonishment. "Okay... Alright. You've assured me that there's nothing inappropriate going on between you and Tyler so I'm going to trust you and leave it at that."

Nodding numbly, Jody grimaced and exited the office without having to be asked to. She was on her way to the lounge when her phone beeped. She sat down next to Finn on one of the sofas and wasted no time in opening the message from Tyler.

_My head's hurting :( Plz come upstairs._

Well, that was quick. Her lips twitched; he really couldn't live without her when he was ill. Feeling eyes on her, she momentarily looked up from her phone to see Floss looking at her but Floss being Floss averted her gaze, suddenly appearing to be interested in her fingernails. Typical. Some things would never change around here, Floss' Jyler shipping and watching being chief among them.

_No chance. Get off your phone and get some sleep x_

By the time she realised that she'd added a girly kiss on the end of the message, it was already too late to do anything about it.


	11. Chapter 11

"OH. EM. GEE. I need to buy this!" Candi-Rose squealed in declaration, turning to Bird and Jody, both of whom were unimpressed. She was after yet another lip pencil. Why were lip pencils necessary anyway? Didn't lipstick pretty much cover a girl's lips in their entirety?

 _I am bored 2 death_ , Jody wrote, hitting send almost straight away.

The response was speedy.  _I'm having the time of my life._

She scowled. Why was she stuck here when he got to have fun elsewhere?  _W/out me?_

_Never w/out u ;) W8ing 4 u. :heart:_

She bit her lip as her face heated up. The cheek! This was the most flirtatious thing he'd written to her yet. But... why was he giving her mixed signals? The last time they'd done something remotely resembling a date, he'd behaved as though he would've rather been doing quadruple chores for Mike. She paused, blinking rapidly. Why did it matter so much to her? She'd told herself and told herself that she could never act upon her feelings even if they were mutual—which often appeared to be the case—in order to save their friendship.

"Babes, stop texting him for like one second and tell me if this goes with my eyes," Candi-Rose ordered, wearing a ridiculously blue shade of eyeliner.

"You've already bought that one," she sneered, perhaps sounding nastier than intended but too distracted by Tyler to care. She tried to think of a witty reply to his text, totally ignoring the stares from both of her companions.

"Well  _sorry_  for getting in between you two!" the younger girl exclaimed with an attitude. "Come on, Bird, let's go!"

Jody momentarily looked up from her phone to see Bird silently pleading her not to leave him alone with Candi-Rose. Apparently, even he, the one who was probably more fond of Candi-Rose than anyone else was, couldn't bear to accompany her on a shopping spree on his lonesome. He received no sympathy from Jody, though, who dismissively waved him off. He'd be fine; he could put his trademark headphones on to block Candi-Rose out and then tell her exactly what she wanted to hear but Jody couldn't do that. She simply wasn't capable of keeping her honest opinion to herself.

Walking away from the make-up section at Olympian speed, she settled for an utterly rubbish reply.  _Where r u ;)_ She sighed. She sucked at flirting.

_the arcade_

Typical. Where else would he have been, really? He loved messing around in the arcade. He'd probably gone there first thing after they'd all dispersed following their scheduled bowling session. Who was there with him, though? He was hardly having the 'time of his life' by himself. Her eyes widened in shock horror. What if one of the others was reading the messages over his shoulder? Whoever it was would  _never_  let her (and Tyler) live it down.

_I'll be there xxx_

On her way out of the store, she saw a few of the others wandering through the centre of the shopping mall, notably Chloe and Joseph who appeared to be deep in conversation. It was good to see the latter spending more time with the others after his best friend had recently been fostered. She began her short walk to the arcade, thinking about how good the day had been so far (barring Candi-Rose's shopping spree).

For the first time in a long time, she felt truly relaxed and happy with no Luke, Kingsley or anyone/anything else to stress her out. Did she really want to jeopardise her relative state of peace by continuing down the dangerous path her friendship with Tyler was going? Was the drama worth it, especially when a relationship was likely not to work out?

.:. QK .:.

_Punch. Punch. Punch._

Jody pulled back, struggling to find the motivation to punch harder. She sighed. She was at her best when she was angry; she'd never actually been stress-free from the time she'd taken boxing up (or rather, taken it up _again_  following a short-lived stint back when she was about ten) until now. How did people like Brandon, who had nothing to be angry about, manage to get on with it with vigour every single time?

"Hey." She smiled, recognising his voice. _Speak of the devil..._

"Hey," she repeated, turning to the boy standing next to her. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," he answered, digging his ungloved hands in his pockets. "You?"

"I'm alright," she responded, noticing that he wasn't dressed in his gym clothes. "You not boxing today?" He smiled shyly, shrugging. She regarded him in bewilderment. "Why are you here then?"

"I... came to see my mates," he replied, sounding somewhat uncertain. She couldn't help but briefly scan the gym to find that his friends weren't present. She looked back at him, wondering what was up. Perhaps he'd been stood up and felt embarrassed by it. Yep, that had to be it. Why else would he be awkwardly standing here and talking to her in an almost desperate manner?

"Right, and I guess I'm one of them?" she teased lightly, motioning him over to a nearby bench.

"Yeah," he said quietly as they sat down together. She wasn't sure if it was just the light but she could've sworn that his skin looked flushed like it usually did after one of his workouts. "How's school?"

She blinked, a little taken aback by his question. They didn't usually talk about things that didn't have anything to do with boxing; there'd been no reason to after they'd initially got to know each other. "Good, I suppose. Did alright in my mocks—we did them a few weeks back."

"Cool," he commented, nodding his head. "How are things at the children's home?"

She raised an eyebrow. He was definitely not himself today. "Err, alright. We've had someone leave recently we're 'regrouping'." She made air quotations with her fingers for that last word. Having only thirteen residents was taking some getting used to. It was hard to imagine that at one time, they'd had only ten residents (Lily not included) at Elm Tree House in between Gus' departure and Floss' arrival.

"Were you close to her? Or him?"

The only times she'd been 'close' to Archie was when she'd whacked him in the face with a bag, caused his nose to bleed after shutting her door on him and very recently knocked him into the bannister. Sasha had been fond of him, though, no matter how much she'd denied caring about anyone, especially the younger boys. "Him. And no, not really... What's with the twenty-one questions?"

He blushed, clearly caught off-guard. "Just getting to know you."

He'd already done that. Why did he want to know  _more_? She supposed she did refrain from talking about the deep stuff with him but that was because she didn't feel comfortable doing that; he was a nice, normal guy with a mum and a dad whereas she was a (usually) raging and orphaned care kid. He didn't judge her, she knew that, but it was difficult explaining her messed up life to people who just wouldn't get it.

"Got any brothers, Brandon?" she questioned, involuntarily thinking of Luke. Simon had mentioned the persistent calls again in their quadrennial meeting a couple of days ago. Apparently, her good old brother wasn't going to give up anytime soon.

"I'm the only boy; I've got a little sister."

"Lucky you," she muttered, pressing her lips together. "I've got two brothers. Total deadbeats."

Liam O'Donovan's older brother had done the responsible thing by taking him in. That one time, stood in her gran's old flat, she'd thought that her Kingsley was going to do the same. She'd been a total idiot for falling for his lies. What if she let Luke in and he took after their brother, dangling a dream in front of her face and then callously crushing it?

"Did they let you down?" he implored softly.

"Something like that," she stated dryly, clenching her fists as her blood boiled like it usually did when she boxed at her best. She just had to talk about her crappy family to get into the fighting spirit. Who knew? She stood up, looking down at Brandon. "I've been sitting out long enough. I'd best get back to it."

He nodded. She turned away from him, returning to her punching bag—surprisingly, no one had snapped it up while she'd been sitting out—but not before surreptitiously sneaking another glance at him. He was aimlessly looking around, reminding her of Floss whenever she was nearly caught staring at her and Tyler. If Jody didn't know any better, she would've thought that Brandon had come to the gym just to see her.

.:. QK .:.

By the time May-Li dropped Jody off at Ashdene Ridge, it was already dark. On the way up, she spotted a yawning Shona sitting in the office and smiled to herself; she knew where the night care worker would end up in a couple of minutes. When she reached the landing, she was pleasantly surprised to see that there was no queue outside the bathroom. She wondered if some of the others were lining up for the spare instead, in direct violation of the house rules—they were only allowed to use the spare in the staff bedroom if they were desperate for the toilet. Dashing into her bedroom, she hastily put her gym bag away, donned her bathrobe and grabbed a hair-wrap before claiming the bathroom for herself.

Following a quick shower, she was busy brushing her teeth when there was a knock on the door.

"Jody!" hissed a voice she knew all too well. "Open up!"

Her eyes widened. He sounded _desperate_  and after one of the boys (she forgot which) had recently relieved himself in one of the garden bushes (she definitely hadn't forgotten which), it probably wasn't a good idea to keep him waiting. She spat her mouthful of frothy toothpaste out before rushing over to the door and yanking it open, her toothbrush still in one hand and the door handle in the other.

"What?" she asked amusedly, taking in Tyler's appearance. He was standing right outside in obscenely orange nightclothes with a towel slung lazily around his shoulders. "Do you need to go?"

"Nah, I just want to run myself a bath," he answered, " _before_  the others get here."

Considering the household gossip regarding them, she very reluctantly let him in before locking the door behind them just in case someone walked in and got the wrong idea. Walking back to the basin, she continued to brush her teeth as he turned the bathtub tap on.

Listening to the tap run, she wondered if she'd ever be able to bring herself to actually get into a bathtub full of water. Even now, after all these years, the memories of her mother and sometimes Kingsley holding her head underwater were still fresh in her mind. Early on, her independent reviewing officer had suggested that she was possibly scared of large bodies of water rather than baths themselves but she knew that couldn't be true; she was fine in swimming pools and although she wasn't as fond of swimming as Finn was, she enjoyed a good swim every other week.

"Err, where is everyone?" she questioned, putting her toothbrush away. "It's dead quiet up here."

"They're watching TV," he replied, nearly falling into the bathtub from his perch on the edge.

She raised an eyebrow. Only the older kids tended to hang around downstairs at this time, even if Shona was the one on night duty. "What,  _all_  of them?"

He nodded, dipping his hand in the rising water. "They're watching Look North. Apparently, there's some royal scandal."

She scoffed. "I thought they liked the royals? Why do they want to watch their faves being slagged off on the regional TV? Wait, are there even any royals in this region?"

"There are nobles. I think they're called peers? Anyway, I'm pretty sure some of them are invited to Prince Harry's wedding, so they at least know the royals," he said, turning the tap off. She tightened the wrap on her hair, watching as he rose to his feet. "Do you think you could watch the bath for a second? I just need to get something from my room."

"Yeah, sure," she responded, carefully sitting down on the edge of the bathtub as he left the room.

Swallowing deeply, she turned her head towards the tub ever so slightly and eyed the still surface of the water. It was unlike any other body of water she'd ever seen—stagnant, unmoving. It didn't  _appear_  to be dangerous but, then again, neither did Ryan.

Nevertheless, she tentatively dipped a finger in the water, trying to remember a good time—a time she wasn't punished in the bathtub. Tragically, she realised there either wasn't such a time or she simply couldn't recall it. Either way, it seemed she was going to be stuck with the bad memories forever.

The door clicked just then and she jumped, her head snapping towards it so fast that she was sure she was going to get whiplash. She released a shaky breath when she saw that it was only Tyler. For a second there, she'd thought that it was... well, someone who had zero chance of being there.

"You alright?" he implored, sitting down next to her. She nodded, pulling her hand out of the water and realising what a weird place the bathroom was to be having a conversation. "Wait..." She looked at him to see that he was regarding her in a speculative manner. "Are you still scared?" She looked away, folding her arms around herself as if she was cold. She didn't want to admit to it. It was totally pathetic for someone her age. "They'll never be able to get you. He's in prison and she's—"

"Dead, I know," she quietly cut him off, a shiver running up her spine. "I know they're not just going to walk in and push me under... but it's not easy to forget, even after all this time."

"Well, it really is just water," he said, and before she knew it, he'd splashed her with water from the bathtub. Her mouth dropped open and she glared at him. Oh, it was  _so_  on.

.:. QK .:.

The following morning, Mike stood in the kitchen with his arms crossed, silently scrutinising all of the residents sitting around the dining table. Jody exchanged a guilty glance with Tyler, envying Joseph who was sitting at the breakfast bar, facing away from Mike and thus escaping his piercing gaze.

"Who was it then?" he asked sternly, his eyes darting around the table. "Which one of you jokers made a mess of the bathroom last night?!"

"It wasn't me," Floss firmly announced. "I found it like that when I went in to brush my teeth last night."

The table broke out into murmurs of agreement but the two culprits remained silent. Jody avoided looking at Tyler again, biting back a smile as she remembered how their splash match had ended with the two of them falling backwards into the bathtub, causing some of the water to spill over the edge and onto the floor. She blushed, trying really hard not to meet his gaze.

From the way he'd suddenly averted his gaze when she'd stood up afterwards, he'd either seen something he shouldn't have—she had been wearing nothing but a bathrobe and it wasn't a particularly  _long_  one at that—or her bathrobe had been clinging to her body a little too snugly for him to be comfortable looking at it. Either way, far from being embarrassed, she'd been pleased; his reaction had confirmed that he didn't think of her as just one of the guys.

"You know, I nearly slipped when I went to the loo," Alex spoke up, sounding so insincere that Jody turned to look at him in disbelief. Unfortunately, Charlie, who was sitting in between her and Alex, was staring right at her. She immediately looked away but the damage had already been done; Charlie knew that something was up.

"Wait," Jay interjected, smirking as he raised a suggestive eyebrow at Tyler. As he did so, Jody braced herself for her and Tyler's imminent exposure. "Jody and Tyler were the only ones who weren't downstairs."

The responses were immediate.

"I was in my room."

"I was at the gym all evening."

Jay laughed. "I meant  _afterwards_ , Jody."

"I was in my room, sleeping," she lied, narrowing her eyes at the younger boy. "What were all of  _you_  doing still up?"

A few groans went around the table as they all realised they'd been rumbled.

"Well done, mate," Ryan mumbled sarcastically.

"Guys?" Mike prompted, appearing to be disappointed. "What have I told you told you about late night TV?"

As the head care worker launched into a lecture about the house rules regarding late night escapades, Jody shared a discreet smile with Tyler, secure in the knowledge that their secret was safe. Maybe it had been a long time coming but something had changed between the two of them; they'd crossed some sort of line in the bathroom and things were never quite going to be the same again. She didn't know how to feel about that. Happy that their friendship was evolving into something new? Or sad that they'd never be the innocent, biscuit obsessed Jody and Tyler ever again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I didn't want Brandon's crush on Jody to feel so out of the blue like it did in the show (as did his existence). Hopefully, it'll make the RyanMan thing run a lot smoother. The same with Tyler and Jody. When I watched the episode, I got the feeling that they both knew how the other felt about them but just when she found the courage to acknowledge it, he was still too afraid to admit he felt the same. I felt really bad for Jody but it all turned out alright in the end, didn't it? I wonder how Brandon took the break up and what, if any, reason Jody gave him for not wanting to date him anymore.**


	12. Chapter 12

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Jody nearly wore the carpet of her bedroom out as she repeatedly paced the length of the room, the words 'Luke's birthday' flashing out at her from the calendar displayed on her mobile phone screen. She threw the phone on her bed and clutched her head, trying to decide what to do.

Kingsley's birthday was easy; ever since he'd nearly killed her, she didn't respond to any of his correspondence which went straight into the bin after a quick read and didn't bother sending him birthday cards, even on the years he managed to remember hers. However, this was Luke's first birthday since their estrangement and while giving him the Kingsley treatment seemed overly harsh, she didn't feel that he deserved to receive well-wishes from her either. For his sake, she hoped Kingsley sent him a card, no matter how much the pair had always disliked one another, because she couldn't send him one even if she wanted to; she didn't know where he lived.

A text, though? She could do that, easily, but whether it was a good idea or not was entirely a different matter. After all, she was still uninterested in seeing him and no matter how much he deserved it, she didn't want to give him false hopes. She had to decide carefully. This decision of hers would set in motion the procedure for every single year for if she ignored this birthday, she'd have to ignore all the subsequent ones as well; if she ignored him this year but didn't the next, he'd take her birthday text as a sign of forgiveness. She was never going to forgive him. Forgiving Denise had been hard enough and had only been possible because she was dead but forgiving either of the very much still alive Jackson men was an impossible task. Her heart just wouldn't allow it.

With a mind still rife with turmoil, Jody trudged out of her room and went downstairs, the house so quiet that she could hear the floorboards creaking under her feet. Clearly, everyone else was either still asleep or lounging around in bed, trying to get back to sleep. She knocked on the office door even though the blinds weren't open and she could clearly see that Mike wasn't busy. He looked up from his desk, smiling warmly at her and getting up to open the door.

"Good morning," he greeted cheerily, beckoning her in. She yawned and muttered a response, inching into the room. "I'm surprised to see you up this early. Didn't expect to see any of you—besides Charlie—until at least ten."

"It's Luke's birthday tomorrow," she stated, getting straight to the point.

"Oh, that's nice," he commented, sounding genuine. "How old is he going to be?"

"Twenty-one," she answered, wrinkling her nose. He was so old. Older still, ancient even, was Kingsley who was going to be twenty-five this year. "I don't know if I should send him a birthday text or not."

"Do you  _want_  to?" he asked pointedly.

Did she? Her troubled mind yielded no answers. "I don't know," she admitted with a sigh, picking at her dressing gown. "I just don't know."

"You know what?" She peered up at him with bleary eyes, silently asking him 'what?' "This reminds me of the time you were trying to decide whether to send your mum a birthday card."

"But that was different," she said, frowning.

Mike raised an eyebrow. "How?"

"I actually  _wanted_  to send her the card; I was just scared she wouldn't reply... which she didn't." Denise hadn't bothered to contact her until after Simon delivered the news that she'd nearly died at Kingsley's hands. It still hurt when she thought about it. "I don't care if Luke doesn't reply; I just don't want him to think that I've forgotten what he put me through. Because I haven't. I already made  _that_  mistake with one brother."

"What are you afraid of, Jody?" She instantly looked down at her feet, the words sticking in her throat. She was afraid of a lot of things, many of them things she didn't want to admit. Saying them out loud would make them real, and fear was never meant to be real, it was just meant to be something that was in one's head. "Would it help if you went to see your mother?"

She looked up at him in confusion. "My mother?" She nearly laughed. "She wasn't much help when she was alive so..."

"It was just a thought," he said, holding his hands up. "I go to my mother's grave at least once every month. It brings me peace."

Opening her mouth, she was about to say that there was a world of difference between his mum and hers but stopped in her tracks when she realised she hadn't visited her mother's grave once. Sure, it'd only been two months since the funeral but she couldn't help but feel like she'd done something wrong.

Instead, she said, "But it's so far away... and you can't drop me off because May-Li isn't here yet."

Mike quickly glanced at his watch. "I'm taking Charlie there in about half an hour anyway; her grandmother's buried in the same cemetery as your mother. Why don't you grab some breakfast and get changed?" He checked his watch again. "May-Li should be here in a few minutes."

"Okay..." she replied uncertainly, slowly leaving the office. She wasn't quite sure how much help, if any, her dead mother would be in making a decision regarding Luke but what did she have to lose?

.:. QK .:.

Once they reached the cemetery, Jody realised it hadn't taken that long at all to get there. In fact, there had been no need for Mike to give her a lift; it seemed to be only about a thirty-minute walk. She preferred riding her bike to walking but next time—if there ever was a next time—she'd be better off not bothering Mike or May-Li to drive her here.

As Mike remained in the car and Charlie went off to (presumably) find her grandma's grave, Jody hesitantly approached the grave she knew to be her mother's, still remembering the exact location of the burial plot from the funeral. She felt butterflies wreaking havoc on her stomach as the headstone she'd never yet seen—it had been installed after she had left the funeral—came into view.

 _Denise Jackson_ , it simply read, looking odd but perhaps fitting in the absence of a loving or even generic inscription underneath her name. It seemed that even Luke had held some sort of grudge against their dead mother at the time of the funeral, if not now.  _7th December 1972_ – _5th February 2018_. Huh, she'd never known the year of her mother's birth—no-one had bothered to tell her—only the day and month. So she'd had Kingsley at only twenty years old... Why wasn't that a surprise?

Her eyes travelled lower and she saw what looked like lilies in the floral tin next to the headstone. She raised an eyebrow, kneeling in front of the grave and putting her own flowers inside the tin. The notice outside said that dying flowers were regularly removed from the floral tins so as not to ruin the appearance of the graves. There was only one other person who'd bother to visit this grave but why would he come all the way to Pottiswood for no good reason, especially so soon before his birthday?

"What do you think, Mum?" she asked quietly, feeling like a weirdo for talking to the dead. However, when she looked up and saw Charlie a few rows ahead, talking animatedly to her grandmother's grave, she felt like the  _normal_  one. "Should I send your son a text?" She laughed mirthlessly then, recalling exactly what sort Denise had been. "Who am I kidding? You hated him until the day you died. If you want me to forgive anyone, it's probably your jailbird fave." She sounded absurd to her own ears; Denise had put Kingsley in prison herself.

Her heart suddenly felt unbearably heavy, and she had to exhale very hard just to resume a normal pace of breathing. She hung her head low, the grief washing over her as if her mother had died only yesterday, vaguely registering footfalls approaching from the left.

"I'm alright, Mike," she said hoarsely, wiping at her stinging eyes. "I'm just—"

"Oh, no need to explain, my dear," responded someone who most definitely was not Mike. She threw her head back to see the old pastor from her mother's funeral standing next to her. "Jody, is it?"

"Yes," she replied, surprised that he remembered her name. He had to have conducted loads of funerals since the last time she'd seen him. "How do you remember me?"

"It'd be quite hard to forget someone who gives a eulogy like the one you did," he answered, appearing to be somewhat amused. She didn't understand what was so funny. Her grief? "Your brother was here very recently, asking if you'd visited yet."

"Luke? I mean, the light-haired one?" she questioned unnecessarily. Of course, it'd been Luke. Who else? The pastor merely nodded gracefully. "How long ago was he here?"

"I'd say about a week ago."

She looked down at the lilies, confused. "So he didn't leave these lilies here?"

"I don't think so; any flowers your brother left would've been removed by the groundskeeper by now."

"Hmm..." she let out, wondering if her mother had close friends she didn't know about. Relatives were out of the question—both of her mother's parents were dead and she'd been an only child.

"I'd best be going; I have a funeral to prepare for," the pastor informed, gesturing towards two men who were digging a fresh grave not too far from her mother's. "Take care, Jody."

"Yeah, you too," she muttered awkwardly, refocusing on her mother's grave. Had it really been two months already? Somehow, between her relationship with Tyler and her discovery of Gray, time had passed her by at breakneck speed.

"So, what should I do, Mum?" she inquired, sighing. "Would I be a bitch if I didn't send him a text? He's been trying really hard to patch things up... but I don't want him to." She realised just then that Luke would find out what her number was if she texted him. And then there was the chance that the jealous girlfriend would see the text. What if the girlfriend lashed out at him because of her and he started to hate her for it? "He has a girlfriend, Mum. Did he ever tell you about her? Is she the reason he stopped talking to you as well?"

She shook her head. Why was she being one of  _those_  women who blamed other women for their misfortunes regarding men? Luke was the one who'd allowed his girlfriend to keep him from contacting her. It was his fault more than his girlfriend's, really. She sighed again. She'd come here hoping for answers but she had the suspect feeling that she was going to be leaving the cemetery with more questions than answers in her mind.

.:. QK .:.

Later that night, long after their weekly Sunday film had finished, Jody found herself unable to sleep. She kept looking at her phone every five seconds, counting down the minutes until midnight, when Luke would officially become twenty-one years old. While she knew that hearing him out at least once was the right thing to do, she was still torn between sending him a text and... doing nothing. She wasn't quite ready for him to have her number; if she was going to let him back into her life, she wanted it to be on her own terms, not his, or Simon's or anyone else's. Checking the time once more to see that it was 23:45, she climbed out of bed and clumsily put on her nightgown, dead set on bending Tyler's ear. Pulling her bedroom door open, she poked her head out to see if anyone was around. Sometimes, the fact that she was the only girl with a room on this side of the house sucked.

Creeping out of her room and past the bathroom, she scanned the vicinity to see that the Wallis brothers' door was closed and so were Finn's and Alex's. Joseph still slept with the door open, which was a slight inconvenience, but she was so tired and conflicted that she couldn't really bring herself to care that he might see her. Besides, even if he didn't see her, he'd definitely hear her talking to Tyler. Without wasting time, she carefully turned the door handle and let herself into the room.

"Ty?" she whispered, walking over to where she knew his lamp was and blindly fumbling around for the switch in the darkness. She felt a hand brush hers just before the lamp turned on, startling her with its intensity.

"Can't sleep?" he asked needlessly, sitting up. She watched him rub his eyes with a pang of guilt. Sometimes she really wondered whether she was a nuisance to him with her a million and one problems. "Did you end up sending him a text, then?"

"It's not midnight yet," she replied, pointing out the time on his digital bedside clock. 23:48.

He looked at the clock, his eyes widening in apparent surprise. "It took me ages to get to sleep; I thought it was something like two." She sighed. She'd really interrupted his sleep. He peered up at her, seemingly confused. "Why are you standing up?... Sit down." He tiredly patted the spot next to him. Not wanting to give him further grief, she sat down in that very same spot, folding one leg underneath her and letting the other hang off the edge of the bed. "What's wrong?"

She looked over at him in astonishment, not having realised that she appeared to be anything but tired. Did she look sad? "I want to send him a text," she answered sluggishly, "but what if we start talking again and he hurts me? Like Kingsley and Mum have _so many times_... I don't think I could take it."

"Look, I barely know Luke," he began, turning to her, "but I know you. You're tough. Even if he does let you down again, you'll bounce back from it."

Her heart warmed at his words but the negative part of her mind couldn't help but wonder if he was just saying things to cheer her up. "You think?"

"I  _know_ ," he answered firmly, "it's why I like you so much."

Her heart skipped a beat. She waited for him to add on the typical 'as a mate' or 'as a friend, you know' but he didn't. "Is it the  _only_  reason?" she teased before he could open his mouth again, deciding she didn't want him to turn it into a friend-zone statement.

"Of course not," he responded, and because it was so dark, even with the lamp on, she couldn't tell if he was smiling or not. His voice belayed nothing of seriousness or jest. She wondered if he was half asleep or something; it wasn't like him to be so open with her about  _that_. He cleared his throat. "Besides, if you don't want him to get ahold of your number, just block him after sending the text."

"No!" she protested, her hands flying to her mouth. If Joseph was awake, he'd definitely heard that. "I thought about it but I couldn't do it," she confessed softly, a lump forming in her throat. It didn't matter that she hadn't spoken to him in ages. There was a huge difference between not giving him her number and outright blocking him. "He's my brother." It was an inadequate explanation—Tyler  _knew_  that Luke was her brother—but it was all she had.

It seemed to be enough for Tyler to understand. "Alright," he said, reaching under his pillow and pulling out his phone. She frowned, unimpressed. She'd heard that the radiation could wreak havoc on a person's brain if they slept with any sort of switched on device right under their pillow. He held his phone out to her, snapping her out of her thoughts. "Here, text him from mine and then  _I'll_  block his number."

Without another word uttered between the two of them, she took his phone and her own into her hands, copying Luke's number from the latter into the message recipient field on the former. The time on Tyler's phone indicated that it was 23:54. She pressed on the 'compose message' field, and the words almost typed themselves.

_Happy birthday x -Ur little sister_


	13. Chapter 13

"Jody!" Floss yelled through the door, her voice shrill. "Hurry up or I'll miss the wedding!"

"You should've got up earlier, then!" Jody called back, dipping her gumshield into a solution she'd spent a good half an hour of the morning making.

The annoying banging on the door persisted but she paid no heed, proceeding to brush her teeth. Why was the wedding of two people none of them knew such a big deal anyway? Ordinary people got married all the time and most of them ended up divorced at one point. The groom, in this case, was the child of a failed marriage and so was the bride in addition to being a divorcee herself. It was hardly a promising prospect. She felt sorry for the innocent children who'd be born into the marriage and end up being cast aside by one or both parents when a divorce eventually took place. Unfortunately, no one else in this house seemed to see the imminent disaster; they all thought the wedding was some great event they all ought to watch for an entire two hours.

"Jody! I really need to go!" Floss wailed. "Get out!"

"Use the spare!" Jody shouted in return, rinsing her toothbrush and putting it back in its place. Floss was just being difficult on purpose.

"Finn's hogging the spare!" the younger girl whined in a high pitched voice. "Pleeeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeee!"

Jody raised an eyebrow. Floss Guppy  _never_  said please to anyone who wasn't Mike or May-Li. Pitying the girl she'd seen grow up right in front of her eyes, she unlocked the door, exchanging places with said girl. As she waited in the hallway, she witnessed all manner of madness as various residents ran amok, preparing for and chattering excitedly about the upcoming nuptials. Honestly, it was as if Mike or someone else they actually  _knew_  was getting married.

"What. Is. Going. On?" She turned her head to see Tyler walking towards her from his room, yawning rather audibly. "Joseph's playing music in his room. It woke me up."

"It's Prince Harry's wedding," she replied flatly, crossing her arms. "Some of this lot are dying to see Meghan Markle's dress and the others are equally dying to see the celeb guests."

To her utter surprise and dismay, his eyes lit up in exuberance. "That's today?!" he exclaimed, grabbing her by the shoulders. "I'm going to miss it!"

"Since when were you such a huge fan of the royals?" she asked, flustered. She'd thought that they'd be able to sneer at the others together but he seemed to have a very different idea.

"I'm not," he answered, letting his hands drop. The light in his eyes instantly waned, worrying her. "But I'm skint so it's probably the best entertainment I'm going to get today."

"How?" she questioned, flabbergasted, "You haven't been skint since we were, like, twelve. Besides, we get thirty quid each from Mike today."

"I owe Jay; I borrowed some money off him last week when I was  _really_  skint," he explained, scratching his head. She frowned. Why had he gone to Jay and not to her? Did he think she'd be no use in that department, given the fact that she was often broke? "I spent that money on a new blazer. I've been wearing the same ones to work for ages."

"Do you want to borrow some from me?" she offered, wanting to go out on the town with him while the others stayed at home and watched live coverage of the royal wedding. She had zero interest in joining them.

He laughed. "Nah, it's okay. I wouldn't want to take money from you when you're not broke for once." She straightened her back, bristling at his words. Although she knew that he hadn't meant any offence by them, they stung.

Floss unlocked and opened the bathroom door just then, strutting out with a relieved look on her face, and Jody watched her disappear down the hallway before turning back to Tyler. "Yeah, well, you've really disappointed me today," she sniped before slipping into the bathroom and slamming the door behind her.

Why had she done that? What was wrong with her? She shook her head. Whatever. Maybe she was PMSing. Remembering what she'd been up to before she let Floss into the bathroom, she stormed over to the basin where she'd left her gumshield to find that it was  _melting_. Panicking, she hastily picked them up to salvage them but it was too late. They were damaged beyond repair. She groaned, dropping down on the edge of the bathtub. She should've just asked Joseph to help her make the cleaning solution...

.:. QK .:.

After having breakfast and getting dressed, Jody headed for the front door, intent on going on a long walk. Her first choice had been to visit Sash and Dex but to her horror, the former had informed her that, like nearly everyone else in the nation, they were going to be watching the royal wedding with their entire family and that she was welcome to go and watch it with them. When she'd declined, citing that the marriage was doomed to fail, her small friend had shocked her by telling her to stop being so negative. Put out by Sasha's attitude, she'd then contacted some of her school friends but received the same sort of response. In fact, the only person who seemed to be as uninterested in the wedding as her was Brandon but his parents had expressly forbidden him from leaving the house until the wedding was over. To top it all off, the Pottiswood Boxing Club's owner wasn't opening up until after two o'clock, so there really was nowhere else to go.

"Err, where do you think you're off to?" Mike asked, his voice coming from the lounge doorway. Jody stopped in her tracks, turning to face him.

"Err, outside for a walk," she replied, shaking her head as if to say 'duh'. "I'm not staying here to watch some stupid wedding with _those_  lot."

"You're going to have to. I haven't given you the permission to go out," he said, matter-of-factly.

She sighed, her eyes shifting around the lobby and centring in on May-Li who was in the kitchen. "I'll ask May-Li, then."

"Ask me what?" May-Li questioned, shocking Jody with her impressive hearing range. She hadn't even been speaking that loud.

"If I can go out."

"I'm afraid you can't," the carer responded, coming up to the doorway of the kitchen. "You're barely home these days; you've asked me to take you to the gym practically every day this week."

Jody crossed her arms, trying not to let her resolve break under Mike's and May-Li's brutal gazes. "You can't make me stay."

"I think you'll find that we can," Mike stated, crossing his arms as well, "and we will."

"But—" she spluttered, cutting herself off when she realised that a mere walk wasn't worth a potential grounding, even if it meant she had to stare at her bedroom wall for two whole hours. " _Fine_ ," she begrudgingly acquiesced, stomping towards the foot of the staircase.

Not surprisingly, Mike cleared his throat rather loudly, jerking his thumb towards the lounge. She pressed her lips together in a thin line, forcing herself to walk into the lounge. Rolling her eyes at the twelve kids sitting on and around the sofas, she sat down on the floor next to Ryan who gave her a smug look.

"Finally here to witness the only wedding you'll ever see?" he taunted quietly, smirking.

"Who says it's the only one I'll ever see?" she questioned through gritted teeth, keeping her eyes trained on the TV in front of her. Various guests were shown walking down a path to the abbey, lined with hordes of screaming royal fans. Who the f*** was crazy enough to stand out there in the sweltering heat for hours on end?

"Come on, who would invite you to their wedding?" he implored demeaningly, his voice low enough so that no one else would hear him. "Your criminal brothers won't get married and I doubt any of your mates would want you spoiling the mood at their weddings."

"Look, it's Posh and Becks!" Candi-Rose squealed.

"She looks as stroppy as Jody!" Jay commented, drawing a few sniggers from the others. Jody glared daggers at him but he just smiled in response.

"See what I mean?" Ryan inquired smugly. "But don't worry. If Tyler's stupid enough to marry you, and I'm sure he will be if he isn't already, you'll at least get to be a bride."

"Well, at least someone'll marry me," she countered, looking around and realising that Tyler was sitting on the sofa behind them. She hoped against hope that he was too engrossed in the wedding to hear them. "Who'd marry you?" She looked at Ryan to see that he was smiling, unfazed by her words, before spying Chloe sitting next to the other sofa. "I don't know about me and my brothers but Chloe definitely wouldn't want you at her wedding. She knows you're no good. You'd probably try to ruin her big day an' all."

She watched as his smile faltered, drawing satisfaction from his discomfort. "Yeah, well, we'll see," he bit back lamely, plastering on a neutral expression. She rolled her eyes, returning her gaze to the TV.

Over the next half hour, she watched on in boredom as the camera focussed on different celebrities taking their seats in the abbey and chatting to other high profile guests, and members of the royal family, including the Queen, arrived. However, when Meghan Markle appeared on-screen, Jody surprised even herself by leaning forward and actually paying attention. Candi-Rose proceeded to swoon over the wedding dress, saying how she'd love a pink version of it, but Jody was more interested in the fact that the bride's father wasn't anywhere to be seen. It was sad that even a princess' dad couldn't be there for her on her big day.

Blocking the background conversation out, she observed with rapt attention as Prince Charles walked his daughter in law down the aisle and the bride's mother dabbed away tears while witnessing her daughter marry. Her heart sunk a little. Her mother would never see her marry—if she ever married—and her father would never walk her down the aisle. She'd never been one to daydream about a fairy-tale wedding and a happy ever after—she didn't even believe in relationships let alone marriage—but she'd always thought that if she somehow did find herself getting married, she'd be surrounded by family members who'd share in her joy. But she had no one. Her father had forgotten her, her mother was dead, her brother was in jail and her other brother was walking on thin ice with her.

As soon as the wedding was over, Jody bolted out of the lounge and ran upstairs. The newly minted Duke and Duchess of Sussex had looked so happy to be starting their new lives together. How was it possible when they came from such horrid family backgrounds?  _How_?

.:. QK .:.

Yawning horrendously loud and vigorously rubbing her eyes, Jody forced herself to stay awake as she surfed the internet for boxing videos, her one and only vice nowadays. She'd spent a good portion of the evening listening to some of the girls go on and on about Prince Harry's fairy-tale wedding and how much they wished they could have weddings just like that, leaving her feeling bereft and empty for not sharing their enthusiasm. She didn't understand how they could be so optimistic about their own futures when they'd had such shitty lives up until now.

Maybe once, when she was about eight or nine, she'd harboured such foolish fancies but that girl was long gone, had been nearly as long as she'd been in care. She didn't believe in silly, unrealistic things like that anymore, not since she'd begun to hate girly clothes because of the dresses Kingsley had forced her to wear and not since she'd started to force herself to always appear tough, even though she sometimes felt like weeping and sobbing until her tear ducts became dry.

Her eyes burnt, serving as a natural indicator of her excessive screen time. Lightly pressing the power button on her phone to lock it, she heard the door handle turn and the door click open. Tyler stepped into the room, hesitantly approaching her bed and sitting down on the edge.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked, clearly concerned. She regarded him with tired eyes, wondering if her hurt and confusion was written all over her face. "I heard what Ryan said to you." She looked down at her hands, trying to find the right words to respond with. As ever, she had the option of saying she was fine but this was Tyler and she didn't feel like lying, even though she didn't quite feel like telling the truth either. "Why do you listen to him? What does he know about your friends and their weddings?"

"He's not all wrong, though, is he?" she questioned, licking her lips. "I  _would_  ruin the mood at my mates' weddings"—she looked him right in the eyes—"and you know why."

He didn't respond, making the corners of her lips twitch. Even he couldn't convince her, or himself, that she was anything but seriously messed up and emotionally damaged. "I don't care," he finally replied, tentatively taking one of her hands in his own. "I'd invite you to my wedding a hundred times over."

"You'd get married a hundred times?" she implored, raising an eyebrow. She wondered if he'd heard Ryan talk about the two of them marrying but quickly shot the idea down; he always ran away from her when it came to the feelings between them, not towards her. "What would I be? Your best man?"

"My best  _friend_ ," he answered instantly, "and anything else you want to be." She gulped, staring at him as he suddenly found their entwined hands very interesting, lending credence to her initial suspicion that he  _had_  heard everything Ryan had said to her in the lounge.  _Anything else_  she wanted to be. Was he finally admitting to this thing that was going on between them, the thing that had been going on for months on end now? Was it finally time for her to confront him about it?

What was she supposed to say? The subtle 'what do you want me to be?' or the direct 'I like you too'? Instead, she ended up blurting out a completely different set of words: "Have you ever wondered how life would've turned out if your parents had got married?" She sighed inwardly, mentally berating herself for her utter inability to talk. Here she was, holding his damn hand but not knowing what to say. She  _never_  knew what to say.

"I don't know," he responded with a shrug of the shoulders. "I've never known my dad so I guess I've never thought about it."

"I guess it wouldn't have changed anything in my life; he still would've cheated on her and walked out on us," she said bitterly, lightly squeezing his hand and drawing a sense of comfort from doing so. He blinked rapidly, staring at her. "What?" she asked, her heart thundering away in her chest. Had she gone too far in squeezing his hand? She started to pull her hand away but his grip tightened with considerable force, shocking her (in a good way) and hurting her in equal measure.

Seemingly realising that he was hurting her, he loosened his grip but didn't let go to her secret delight. "In all the years I've known you, you've never mentioned your dad."

"Well, there's a first for everything," she stated, smiling weakly. There was going to have to be a first time for her to admit her feelings for him too.  _Next time_. Next time she had the chance, she'd bring up both his feelings and hers and wouldn't let him run away, even if it meant she had to put her heart on the line.


	14. Chapter 14

_Brandon._ Her finger hovered uncertainly over his name. It should've been easy; he was a nice enough guy and they had at least one common interest, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She sighed as snippets of various conversations she'd engaged in throughout the day flashed through her mind, including said boy's "Come see a film with me, maybe?" after she'd helped him out with his sparring in the back garden and her best friend's frank but brutal "I wouldn't" after she'd asked him to give him one good reason why he'd take her to the pictures. The two boys' attitudes towards her couldn't have been more different.

Tears threatened to well up in her eyes. He wouldn't take her to the pictures because he didn't have money? That was a bulls*** excuse; he'd have thirty quid in a matter of days. No, the truth was that he just didn't want to. She chuckled at her own naivety, remembering how strangely he'd behaved during and after their last cinema trip. At the time, she'd brushed it off as a one-time discrepancy, what they called an outlier in a set of experiment results, believing that he couldn't have possibly not liked her back but the crux of the matter was all too clear to her now: he'd never seen her as anything other than a friend who happened to be a girl, let alone girlfriend material. All the indications of his feeling more than just friendship for her, the too-long gazes and the surreptitious glances, had all been in her head, part of a wondrous dream she'd drifted off into one night and had never truly woken up from.

Until now.

Maybe this was how it was meant to be: her with Brandon and him with some version of Chanelle or Sophie. Perhaps the pair of them had always been destined to be best friends, nothing more, nothing less, and when he'd almost brutally shot her down not twenty minutes ago, he'd saved her the trouble of explicitly stating her unrequited feelings and inevitably causing the destruction of their six-year-old friendship.

She smiled sadly, swallowing the lump in her throat. No matter how much of an idiot he was at times, he'd always been a good friend to her, warning her off the incorrect path when she either couldn't or wouldn't see that she was wrong, and she did the same for him, his recent ill-fated rebellion against Mike and May-Li coming to mind. It was just what they did for eachother; keeping one another right. Perhaps, by turning her down, he'd once again just been trying to avert another disaster of her own making? Being heartbroken and all, she couldn't quite see the bigger picture in the way he no doubt could, but maybe after a few days or weeks, she'd be able to see that he'd rejected her for the good of their friendship. All she had to do now was get over him and what better way to do that than to see someone else?

Before she could second guess herself, she finally pressed down on Brandon's contact number. The dulcet dialling tone rung loud in the aptly named quiet room as its sole occupant observed her unmanicured nails, forcing down the nagging sense of guilt at potentially using the boy who fancied her.  _No._  She wasn't using him. She'd never do that to someone; she knew first hand how awful it felt. She was merely going to go out with him to get to know him better, to see if she liked him well enough to take things further (although she didn't really know what further was). Wasn't that the point of dating? And, who knew, maybe she'd come to like him as much as he liked her and even as much as she liked Tyler? It was a waiting game... one that she had no choice but to play.

.:. QK .:.

That evening, Jody didn't get back home until half eight. Wanting to avoid Candi-Rose who'd helped her get ready for the date as if she were minutes away from walking down the aisle, she gently opened the front door and tiptoed to the stairs while scanning the lobby for stalkers. There was no one in the office and the doors to the lounge were closed, though she could hear the low but distinct humming of the telly coming from inside the lounge. Satisfied that no one (Ryan, really) was watching her, she jogged up the stairs and went straight to her bedroom. Closing the door behind her, she took her jacket off and let it drop to the floor before collapsing on her bed. With any luck, Candi-Rose wouldn't pester her with questions regarding the date until tomorrow.

Contrary to her expectations, the date had been pretty easy to handle. Maybe it was because there hadn't been much opportunity to talk, what with it being entirely inside a cinema screening room, but it'd been bearable and Brandon hadn't done anything weird like attempting to kiss her. In fact, he hadn't even tried to hold her hand which she appreciated much more than he could possibly know. She wasn't ready for any sort of touchy-feely interactions so soon after the incredibly physical (?), and, in hindsight, embarrassing, phase of her friendship with Tyler, and she didn't think she would be anytime soon, whether with Brandon or another boy. As for Brandon himself, no matter how sweet and cute he was, he didn't really feel like anything other than a friend at the moment—no butterflies, no blood rushing to her face, no heart beating fast—so she wasn't sure whether she was going to go out with him again.  _If_  he asked her out again, that was.

She sighed, getting up to change into her nightclothes. A few minutes later, she padded out of her room, walking up the hallway to the bathroom and nearly colliding into Ryan. He didn't even react to their near-miss, looking straight through her like he was a blind man.

"Oi, watch where you're going!" she exclaimed, glancing sideways at the bathroom door to see that it was engaged.

"Huh?" he let out dumbly before visibly snapping out of his daze. He narrowed his eyes at her, looking her up and down in a condescending manner. "You borrow those from Candi?" She cleared her throat. She liked to think that her jammies were peach, not pink.

"No," she replied amusedly, noticing that there was something off about him. Well, even more so than usual. "What's got your knickers in a twist? You not happy even after becoming a hero and going on TV?"

She still couldn't believe he'd tackled a burglar just this morning. It wasn't like him at all. Before Brandon had shown up with a new gumshield for her, she'd been berating herself for not taking the burglar out herself and claiming the cash reward. She didn't care about it so much anymore but had wished that someone other than him had stopped the thief when she'd heard about how he'd shot Candi-Rose and Chloe down when they'd asked if they could accompany him to his interview. His 'friendship' with Candi-Rose was shaky at best but she was the one who'd made him an internet sensation and Chloe was his sister... How could he snub them like that?

"Of course I'm happy," he responded flatly, not appearing to be happy at all. Then again, that was just what he usually looked like. "Not all of us make it on TV." He needed knocking down a peg or two. She could literally feel the arrogance radiating off him.

"You're not the only one. You weren't the first neither," she stated pointedly, smirking at him. "Kazima made it on the internet and the telly way before you. That was _years_ ago, and it was national TV too."

"Hmm..." he hummed, stroking his chin in mock thought. "She did make national TV"—he nodded—"but not as a hero."

She scoffed. She didn't have a response to that. Crossing her arms, she leant against the wall behind her. Ryan Reeves was truly despicable. At one time, she'd thought he had the potential to change because Chloe seemed to think that he was worth something but given how he'd treated those closest to him today, she wasn't so sure anymore.

"You're never going to change, are you?" she questioned coldly. "You're just like my brother. He's never going to change either. That's why he's in prison,  _again_." She shook her head in chagrin. In his last letter, Kingsley had yet again asked for more money. "Be careful, Ryan. My brother reached the point of no return when he was your age too. It's when he joined a gang and started treating me like shit."

"I'm nothing like your brother!" he snapped, his face going red. "I'd never hurt Chloe!"

"Wouldn't you?" she countered, frowning. "You already did today; Candi-Rose told me all about the interview..." He looked to the ceiling, seemingly recalling what he'd done. "Not to mention the other things you've done."

All of a sudden, his face drained of colour. Her eyes widened in surprise. He'd always been a pale-skinned boy but never this pale. "Wh—What is it that I've done?" Was he seriously playing the innocent here? He knew that she knew about all of his wrongdoings during his time at Ashdene Ridge, beginning with him convincing Tyler to help him steal the office computer and letting him take all of the blame.

"Oh, give it up," she said with a sigh. "I  _know._ "

He appeared to be worried. "You... know?"

"You know, the blackmail," she elaborated, giving him a pointed look. He straightened his back.

"Why bother with anonymous messages when you're going to threaten me in person?" he sneered, staring down at her. She stood up as tall as she could—he was pretty tall but not as tall as Tyler—and peered up at him in bewilderment. What messages? "For your own good, I suggest you keep your mouth shut. I've got so much dirt on you that you won't be able to show your face to that new boyfriend of yours if you slip up."  _Boyfriend_? She'd never thought she'd have one of those. "Get rid of that precious blackmail photo as well while you're at it."

Far from being intimidated, she was actually amused. He sounded so delusional that she had to wonder if he was actually sleepwalking—and sleeptalking. "What are you on about?" she asked, chuckling. "Why would I have a photo of you blackmailing that girl?"

His eyebrows knotted together in perplexity. "Girl?" He looked off to the side for a moment before letting out a disappointed sigh. "What girl?"

"The Gordons' daughter?"

Back when Tee had been trying to get back on everyone's good side after Ryan defamed her with doctored voice recordings, she'd told Jody about all the bad things he'd done, starting with how he'd risked getting Johnny arrested just so that he could have the guest room Johnny had been staying in. Tee reckoned that he'd blackmailed the Gordons' daughter in order to further his own plan rather than what he'd told everyone else about trying to get her to confess her crime.

"Oh," he breathed, wiping his face with one hand.

"You were saying?" she prompted, wondering what had been going through his mind when he'd threatened to ruin her in front of Brandon. Whatever it was, it appeared to have nothing to do with his scheming during his first day at Ashdene Ridge. Did that mean he was blackmailing yet another person? Who? Meeting her gaze again, he opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by the sound of the door being unlocked.

"Ooh, what's going on here?" May-Li inquired cheerfully, and Jody stepped back in surprise. She'd thought May-Li had left ages ago since the night care worker was already here but here she was, coming out of the bathroom,  _again_. Over the last month, she'd been going to the bathroom an awful lot. She was too young for bladder issues, wasn't she?

"Err, nothing," Ryan replied just as joyfully. Jody raised an eyebrow at his one hundred and eighty degrees turn. "I was just asking Jody how her date went." He gave her one last look she couldn't quite decipher before quietly backing away in the direction of his room. Apparently, he didn't need the toilet anymore. Weird.

"Oh, how did it go?" May-Li implored, turning to her, resembling an excited mum. "Did you have fun?"

"Yeah, it was alright," she answered, nodding awkwardly. Her own mum should've been here for her at this moment, grilling her about her first date, but deep down, she knew that May-Li was way better than Denise ever would've been. "It was a good film."

As they continued to chat outside the bathroom, of all places, Jody felt strangely invigorated. Now she finally understood why Sasha had been so happy following her first date with Josh even though they'd decided to remain just friends; it wasn't about the boy so much as it was the fact that the first date (and kiss, in Sasha's case) was a sort of milestone on the way to adulthood. She had to admit to herself, it felt good.

.:. QK .:.

The next morning, Jody actively avoided both Candi-Rose and Tyler for two very different reasons: she didn't want Candi-Rose grilling her for details about the date and she didn't want to face Tyler just yet, the pain of being rejected by him still far too fresh for her to be able to talk to him properly. Luckily for her, the resident hero was in such a good mood—perhaps from last night—that he had prepared breakfast for them all and had, therefore, been the centre of attention. Sat in a relatively safe seat between Bird and Charlie, she hadn't even looked Tyler's way once and he hadn't made an effort to talk to her either, probably realising her need for space to sort herself out. Not for the first time since their talk about Brandon the prior day, she'd wondered how much he knew about her feelings for him and if he'd truly understood at the time that she'd been trying to get him to admit to feelings, on his side, which sadly didn't exist and never had.

Shortly after breakfast, she'd been in her bedroom, messing around with her gumshield and thinking about both Tyler and Brandon when Candi-Rose had burst into the room with Sasha in tow. So elated at seeing Sasha had she been that she hadn't immediately kicked said girl and Candi-Rose out of the room when they'd started asking uncomfortable questions about the date, including about  _kissing_. She'd shuddered at the thought. There was only one person she would let kiss her in a heartbeat, anywhere, anytime, but it wasn't the boy who actually fancied her. Still, since she hadn't seen Sasha in ages, she'd allowed the girls to talk her into a shopping trip to town. That was how she found herself sifting through jackets with Sasha.

"She is not serious?" Sasha asked, watching in evident disgust as Candi-Rose tried on yet another lipstick not too far away from them.

"Oh, she is," Jody replied, laughing. "I left Bird to deal with her by himself the last time she did this."

"Bird?" Sasha questioned, puzzled. Jody turned to her, trying to remember if the Wallis brothers had moved in before or after she'd left. "Oh, one of the brothers... Right, I'd forgotten their names." Sasha made a face. "That's not actually his name, is it?"

Jody laughed again, eyeing up a purple jacket. "I think Jay's actually Jacob but Bird's plain old Bird."

"Right," Sasha said, her eyebrows nearly flying up into her hairline before a devious glint suddenly appeared in her eyes. "So, about Brandon, is he the same guy you told me about before—the one from the gym?" she asked, giving her a knowing look. Jody merely nodded, hoping that if she gave casual, disinterested answers, Sasha, and, by extension, Candi-Rose would lose interest in the topic. "I  _knew_  you liked him."

"Wait, what?" she asked, nearly dropping the jacket she'd tried on. "What do you mean?"

"You've mentioned him to me quite a few times before," Sasha stated matter-of-factly as Candi-Rose joined them. "Brandon this, Brandon that."

"No, I never!" she retorted, her eyes widening in shock as she realised Sasha was right. She had told her about Brandon many a time... but only ever when she mentioned the gym. Up until their date, Brandon hadn't been part of her life outside of boxing. "Okay, I did, but I didn't bang on about him twenty-four seven."

Sasha raised an eyebrow. "Didn't say you did."

"Come on, you were totally going on about him the day of the royal wedding!" Candi-Rose exclaimed, jumping up and down. She turned to Sasha. "She kept saying that Brandon would totally agree with her about how lame the wedding was"—her eyes flit to Jody—"which it wasn't, by the way!" Jody rolled her eyes in response. "I loved Meghan's dress."

"Yeah, I thought she was going to show up in some weird puffy thing," Sasha agreed, a look of horror passing over her features. "I think Dex has a crush on her."

All three of them giggled at that, recalling Dexter and Sam, a newbie relief care worker, competing for the affections of a pretty farm girl last year, even though Jody hadn't been there to witness it herself, having been away on a residential school trip. Dexter seemed to be into older women; some of those women being old enough to be his mum.

"Are you and Dex staying for lunch, Sash?" Jody inquired, trying to change the subject. Candi-Rose had already done her head in last weekend when she just wouldn't shut up about the wedding.

Unfortunately, fate had other ideas. "Are you going to wear a dress when you marry Brandon?" Candi-Rose teased just as Sasha responded to Jody's question in the positive.

"I'm not marrying Brandon!" she shouted in annoyance, drawing a few looks from other customers. She'd never tried to picture herself as a bride—never  _dared_  to, actually—but standing here and thinking about it now, she knew almost straight away that she wanted a simple white dress as opposed to whatever tomboy brides wore. "But I would wear a dress, yeah," she admitted, fixing Candi-Rose with a stern look as she added, "Not a pink one, though.

"Let's all be each other's bridesmaids!" Candi-Rose excitedly proposed before skipping to the counter with a plum lipstick. Jody and Sasha exchanged a glance, going to sit on a bench right outside the shop.

While waiting for their friend to complete her purchase, the two girls proceeded to update each other on their respective home lives but Jody couldn't help but feel something wasn't right. Despite their intense Jyler shipping tendencies, neither Sasha nor Candi-Rose had mentioned Tyler once. It wasn't as if she wanted or liked to be teased about him but the sudden change was unsettling, as if the two girls had never taken her feelings for him seriously, just shipping and teasing until someone else like Brandon came along. Brandon himself was a worry as well. She hadn't realised that she spoke about him so much around her friends to the point that they thought she fancied him. She paused, a question suddenly taking root in her mind.

Did she actually fancy Brandon after all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I've been rewatching the entire series with my brothers and have picked up on a few strange things. We've reached the end of Series 5 (including Island) and won't be able to resume until after Ramadan. Anyway, onto the weird things: Chloe somehow gets upstairs for Carmen's pamper party, Dexter is 12-14 in S5E1 (or S5E2) but 11 in Island which has got to be afterwards chronologically, there are two Sashas (filmmaker/social worker from S2E3), two Rosies (Lily's sister, Kingsley's ex girlfriend), two Poppys (Lily's sister, Liam's ex girlfriend ?) and two Lukes (though one is technically Lucas), and Floss only seems to have one Jeff which she ends up giving to Alex even though Harry gave her his one as well. Also, Johnny and Tee have the same surname as Keith which is just whaaat? I know that some women change their child's name to their husband's but Keith was only a boyfriend so, err, what? What's going on?**
> 
> **Another thing, though this is more about fans rather than the show itself. I've witnessed a lot of hate directed at Chloe for outing Ryan in S5E3. Why? It wasn't anything he didn't deserve. He actively manipulated, or rather, in his own words, influenced everyone into voting Joseph out of the DG and then tried to turn them on each other. IMO, she was lenient enough when she handed his written confession back to him in the Series 4 finale.**


	15. Chapter 15

Not having to wake up early on a Monday felt  _so_  good. Jody smiled to herself, rolling over on her belly so that the warmth of the sun's rays streaming in through the window directly hit her back. She sighed in content, feeling like she was sunbathing on a beach. This was somewhat unusual weather for late May, especially after four weeks of near-constant dreariness, but was a welcome change all the same. So comfortable was she that she almost drifted back off to sleep when her mobile phone pinged, interrupting her peace and quiet.

Eyes still closed, she blindly reached out towards the bedside, patting her way across the surface until she felt the familiar rubbery texture of her phone case. Grabbing the phone, she rolled onto her back and forced herself to open her eyes, turning her screen brightness all the way up because she couldn't see a thing in the glaring sunlight. She skimmed through her notifications list, scrolling past random friend requests, a text from Carmen, a WhatsApp message from one of her mates, news about the royal honeymoon, news about Brexit e.t.c. until she saw something that made her jaw drop. She sat up in excitement, quickly reading the article before leaping out of bed and running out of her room.

As she walked up the hallway to Tyler's room, she thought about how excited he'd be. They'd both been waiting for this news for  _ages_. Once she actually found herself standing outside his door, however, she faltered, her hand suspended in the air just in front of the door handle. Could she really just burst into his room, first thing in the morning, without even knocking? She raised her hand to knock but stopped herself from doing that as well. Would that be too formal? She let her hand drop, her excitement rapidly waning. Why was she hesitating so much?

She wasn't Brandon's girlfriend, not yet, and even if she were, why should that change how she behaved around her best friend? She wasn't some medieval woman who was controlled by her man... not that Brandon was her man, though he had texted her the day after the date to say he'd had a good time and had sort of hinted at a second one sometime soon. Unfortunately, Candi-Rose had snatched her phone and replied very positively before she even had the chance to decide for herself. She shook her head. Everything between her and Tyler  _had_  changed, and their actions hereafter had to reflect that.

Barging into someone else's room first thing in the morning was not normal best friend behaviour even for same-sex best friends. Sure, she'd ignored it when she'd thought that Tyler liked her, and so had he, for some reason, but it was no longer appropriate—not that it had been, in the first place—now that she knew he only wanted to be friends. She had to act like everyone else did around their friends.  _Normal_.

"Jody?" Charlie's voice wafted down the hallway, its owner appearing around the corner shortly after. "Oh, there you are!"

"What's up?" Jody asked, stepping away from Tyler's door and meeting Charlie halfway, stopping in between the doors to Joseph's and Finn's rooms.

"I walked down to cemetery this morning and—" Charlie paused as the door to Finn's room opened and said boy popped his head out of the doorway, rubbing his eyes. "Could we go to your room?"

"Err, yeah," Jody replied after a moment, smiling awkwardly at Finn before following Charlie. Being led back to her own room felt odd like she was a kid being dragged to the naughty corner. "Is everything okay?" she asked as she closed her bedroom door behind her, eyeing the older girl in concern. Was she in some sort of trouble?

"Oh, it's nothing bad _,_ " Charlie assured with a small smile, silently asking if she could sit down. Jody relaxed and nodded straight away, amused that the other girl still felt the need to ask. They were well past the point of formalities. "It's just something you ought to know."

Sitting down on the edge of her bed, Jody raised an eyebrow. She hoped it wasn't anything to do with Brandon. "What do you mean?"

"Well, do you remember any of the female mourners who were around when we went to the cemetery last month?" Charlie questioned and Jody blinked in surprise, having not expected this vein of questioning at all. She squinted, trying to picture the faces she might've caught a glimpse of that time at the cemetery but came up with nothing.

"No, I wasn't really looking around," she answered, wondering where this was going. "Why?"

"When I went down there today, a regular came up to me and asked me if I knew the children of Denise Jackson. That is your mum's name, right?" She nodded, motioning for Charlie to continue. "She said that a few days before we last visited, a man approached her and asked if she'd seen anyone visit your mum's grave, especially her children. She told him she saw a young man visit the grave but didn't know if he was your mum's son. Apparently, she wanted to approach you that day we went there, to ask you if were your mum's daughter, but stopped herself when she saw you crying."

"I wasn't crying," she hastily protested, narrowing her eyes in scepticism. What sort of woman frequented a cemetery often enough to witness multiple people visiting the same grave on completely different days, and managed to remember it all? The whole story reeked of dodginess. "There's no one who would ask after me or my brothers. I haven't got any extended family and I don't think any of my mum's friends would come looking for me."

"Hmm," Charlie let out before her eyes suddenly lit up. "Maybe she misunderstood him. She didn't tell me if the man himself mentioned your mother's name. It's possible he just pointed a grave out and she got the wrong one."

"Maybe..." Jody said uncertainly, wrinkling her nose. "But it's not likely, is it?"

"No, you're right," Charlie agreed, shaking her head. "Any sane man would want to make sure that other people know exactly who he's talking about."

Something occurred to Jody just then. "But if someone was asking after me, why didn't the pastor let me know? He told me about Luke." She bit her lip, recalling the flowers she'd discovered in her mother's floral tin which had been too fresh to have been left there by Luke. Was it the work of this mystery man? Even so, it still didn't explain why the pastor hadn't mentioned him... unless... "Is there more than one pastor at the chapel?"

"I never go inside the chapel," Charlie responded, "but I think so. The same pastor can't work there every single day of the week." Jody 'hmm'd, wondering if one of Kingsley's ex-gang brothers was stalking their mother's grave when her stomach rumbled. She tentatively peered up at Charlie to see her stifling a laugh. "Breakfast?" the older girl suggested as she stood up, tipping her head towards the door.

Jody was taken aback. Charlie had walked to the cemetery and back, a combined walking time of about an hour, without eating? Why? "You mean you haven't already had it?"

"I didn't feel hungry earlier," she stated, shrugging her shoulders. Jody made a noise of understanding before following Charlie out of her room.

As the two girls passed the hallway to Tyler's room, Jody turned her head to see said boy and Alex walking down together, the latter lightly (she hoped) punching the former on the arm like she used to. She averted her gaze, forcing herself to appear happy when she and Charlie made eye contact. Why did things have to change as she grew up? Why couldn't they stay the same?

.:. QK .:.

The sun continued to beam on Ashdene Ridge for the next few hours and, as expected, each of the residents took advantage of it in their own way: Charlie sat outside in her tent; Taz helped Joseph with some sort of experiment; Bird sat on the green garden bench, listening to some tunes, next to Candi-Rose who was doing Floss' and Chloe's nails; and the rest, including Jody, were playing football. As per usual, Jody was the only female player, a fact that'd never deterred her, even when Bailey used to taunt her about it, and today, she was on Ryan and Jay's side, playing against Alex, Tyler and Finn. Whether by fate or design, she ended up marking Tyler who despite always having been at least a head taller than her, seldom succeeded in wresting the ball away from her. She grinned as she whizzed past him, kicking the ball into the net as Finn dove in completely the wrong direction. She high-fived Jay, receiving a rare, genuine smile from Ryan who was in goal on the other side of the 'pitch'.

Unfortunately, the once-friendly match took a nasty turn when Jay wound up on the ground and accused Alex of fouling him.

"That was a foul, right, Bird?!" Jay bellowed, held back by Ryan as he lunged for Alex who had to be restrained by both Tyler and Finn. Jody looked to Bird to see that his eyes weren't even open and had probably been closed throughout the entire match.

"Candi-Rose?" she tried, only for said girl to spare her a disparaging glance.

"Nail art requires my full, undivided attention!" she responded, shaking her head and returning to her task of painting Floss' nails. Jody blinked, feeling like she'd travelled back in time to when Carmen used to sit there on their old garden swing and spout out eerily similar nonsense while doing Tee's nails.

"Sorry, Jay, but you've been busted," Floss declared matter-of-factly, sticking up for her 'BFF'. "I'm not falling for your  _lame_  tricks."

"Actually, I think Alex did foul Jay," Chloe spoke up, setting off a round of screaming and arguing that probably wouldn't stop until Mike or May-Li intervened.

As if it were second nature to her, which it probably was, come to think of it, Jody exchanged a look with Tyler, rolling her eyes at Jay's exaggerated wailing. He didn't disappoint, rolling his eyes in return, and just like that, she knew that all was well between the two of them.

"Bench?" he asked over the squabbling, referring to the picnic bench situated far away from the pitch.

"Yeah," she replied quickly, making a run for it. They both sat down on opposite sides of the bench and she leant her elbows on the table in between them. "How long do you think it'll take for Mike and May-Li to break it up?"

"Years," he answered, chuckling. "I don't know where she is but he's hiding inside the office cos of all the extra duties he's taken on."

"Well, May-Li did tell us all not to treat her any different just because we know now," she pointed out, recalling several instances of everyone offering to help May-Li with mundane tasks ever since she revealed that she was pregnant... which had been just yesterday. The news had been a pleasant surprise to them all, though Charlie seemed to have already known. "May-Li pregnant. Can you believe it?"

"I couldn't at first; I thought she was going to stop at two sons," he stated, squinting at the glaring sunlight shining directly on him. "But I guess not. I guess everything changes... eventually."

She pressed her lips together, a strange melancholy taking hold of her as she remembered just how much  _change_  had taken place in her life within the last two days, starting with the stark realisation that he'd never liked her the way that she liked him.  _No_. Why was she upsetting herself, especially on such a nice day? She'd decided to move on from her crush on him and she eventually would. Like he said, change was inevitable, and feelings changed all the time, didn't they? They certainly had for her parents...

Recalling what she'd wanted to tell him earlier, she smiled at him. "Have you heard—"

"About the last instalment?" he finished for her as if he'd read her mind, flashing her a dazzling smile. She suddenly blushed, and she wasn't so sure that it was because of the intense heat. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice. "I saw the trailer this morning! I was thinking we could do a marathon of all the other ones leading up to the release."

She raised an eyebrow, excited by the prospect but doubtful that they could pull it off. "Is there enough time, though?" she questioned. The new film was going to come out in July, just over a month away. "There's a lot to get through." Fifteen films, to be precise.

"Yeah, we've got the whole week!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms out. "And when we have to go back to school, we can still use the weekends!"

"Yeah, you're right," she commented, the uncomfortable weight of the last two days lifting off her shoulders in an instant. It was as if the awkwardness caused by Brandon asking her out had never happened at all. She straightened her back, slamming one hand down on the table. "Let's watch the first one now!"

Almost at once, the pair of them jumped off the bench and sprinted into the house, heading for the DVD stack in the lounge. As the two of them rummaged through the numerous DVDs, sharing conspiratory smiles, Jody felt less like a raging tomboy on the cusp of womanhood and more like the nine-year-old who used to be the lookout for the equally young Tyler while he nicked Gina's biscuits. Once again, Brandon popped into her head and she couldn't help but compare the two boys: she could be a kid around Tyler, her best friend, but had to be more mature around Brandon, her maybe soon-to-be boyfriend. One made her young and the other made her... old? Did she need both?

.:. QK .:.

Later that week, Jody and Tyler sat in front of the telly together, a fifth of the way into their marathon. They'd initially faced a bit of opposition from May-Li who had been a little concerned by their staying inside every day instead of spending time outdoors like everyone else but she'd backed off when they subtly threatened to follow her around all day as if she were an invalid.

They burst into laughter as a funny scene came on, their hands accidentally brushing when they reached into the popcorn bowl at the same time. The occurrence itself wasn't out of the ordinary—it tended to happen when two people shared a bowl or bag of popcorn which was why she'd opted for her own bag on her date with Brandon—but this was the first time it'd happened since before the whole Brandon situation and was the very first time it distracted them from the screen. Their laughter died out nearly straight away and they stared at one another, their hands lying still in the popcorn bowl. Jody swallowed deeply, mentally imploring herself to look away but she just couldn't do it. But why wasn't he looking away? Thanks to him, her mind was playing cruel tricks on her, trying to convince her that he was gazing at her like the guys in rom-coms looked at the women they loved.

He would've never let, or rather told, her to go out with Brandon if he returned her feelings. Why couldn't she just accept that once and for all? Why was she wavering and allowing herself to fall back into  _that_  trap, that stupid, stupid dream where they had a future together?

"Jody?" Candi-Rose called from behind her, snapping her out of her trance. Tyler seemed to regain his senses too, slowly pulling his hand out of the popcorn bowl and looking back at the TV screen.

"Yeah?" Jody prompted, turning to the girl standing next to the sofa. "What is it? We're busy." She didn't mean to sound harsh but the stare-gazing had thrown her off, engulfing her in another bout of confusion regarding her love-life.

As if on cue, Candi-Rose looked between her and Tyler before saying, "You've got a date with Brandon. In half an hour."

"What?!" Jody exclaimed, sitting up and pulling her hand out of the bowl so fast that she nearly spilt all of the popcorn. "I don't remember agreeing to anyth"—she paused, taking her phone out of her pocket and going to her messages—"Ugh, Candi-Rose!" Apparently, that time that Candi-Rose had taken her phone and agreed to a second date, she'd agreed to a certain place and time. "You flip out when someone takes your phone but then you go and do something like this!"

"You knew about this!" Candi-Rose squeaked. "You were there when I texted him and you were fine with it!"

Yes, she had been there, but she'd never thought to check the messages and she most definitely was not fine with it. She'd just assumed that Candi-Rose had merely said 'yes' to a second date and that Brandon would contact her with a possible day and time later. She had thought it a bit odd that he hadn't messaged her since then but hadn't been all that bothered because she'd been occupied by Tyler. At least now she knew why...

"I'm cancelling," she muttered, beginning to compose a message when Candi-Rose stepped forward and straight up snatched her phone from her. "Oi!" she yelled, standing up and taking it back.

"You can't cancel," Tyler spoke up for the first time since Candi-Rose had walked in. Jody spun around, looking down at him. "It's too short notice."

"But"—she exhaled shortly, gesturing towards the TV—"What about this?" The film was at its best part right now and it seemed such a shame to leave it... and him.

"It's fine, we can finish it off later," he said, his eyes downcast. "I'm not going anywhere... but Brandon'll be upset if you back out of your date."

"He's right!" Candi-Rose piped up, her voice irritating Jody as it reminded her why she was in this situation in the first place. "You were going to go out with him again anyway weren't you?"

Tyler pressed his lips together, turning the TV off. "I might as well work on my next forum rep pitch," he mumbled, standing up and stretching.

"Come on, Jody!" Candi-Rose more or less ordered, grabbing Jody by the hand and pulling her towards the lounge door.

Feeling brave, Jody shrugged the younger girl off and walked back up to Tyler. It was now or never. Either she was going mad or he had been looking at her in a way that mere best mates didn't.

"Are you sure?" she asked earnestly, hoping he understood her veiled meaning. She didn't have enough guts to spell it out, especially in front of Candi-Rose, but she had to know. "One of these days, he'll probably ask me to be his girlfriend." That sounded vain but she was pretty sure it was true.

He avoided her gaze just like he had the day he first told her to call Brandon and she just  _knew_  then that he understood her meaning perfectly well. "Yeah," he replied quietly, glancing at her one last time before walking past her. She watched him go, feeling numb as Candi-Rose dragged her to her room.

He hadn't been able to lie to her as a child. He still couldn't. As Candi-Rose fussed over her hair and nails, Jody stared into nothingness. She didn't know what was worse. Being rejected by someone who didn't share her feelings or being rejected by someone who did.


	16. Chapter 16

_Hi sis,_

_How have you been? Its been ages since I wrote too you I know but I've been busy. I'm halfway through my sentence now. Just 2 more years and I'll be out. Sounds great, dont it? Would you be able to give me some money when I get out? You'll be 17 by then wont you. My little monkey all grown up. You'll be working by then, earning enough to spare me some change, right?_

_I know you read these even if you dont reply._

_Luv,_

_your bro._

Jody rolled her eyes, ripping the letter up. She'd got into the habit of doing that after Floss had nicked one of his letters from her bedroom and nearly read it out in front of everyone. Floss had done her a favour, though. Why should she keep his letters anyway? They'd all been near enough the same over the last two years and would probably remain so over the next two years as well. She wondered if he dared to write Luke the same smoozy letters. Probably not. If there was one upside to all this, it was that Kingsley's SPaG was improving. She smiled; she sounded like her English teacher who harped on about spelling, punctuation and grammar all day, every day. Jody herself had had atrocious SPaG when she'd moved into Elm Tree House—the thank you card she'd given to Tyler attested to that—but she'd worked hard on it and within two years, she was able to write properly.

She chucked the fragments of the letter in the bin. She couldn't sit here and dwell on her jailbird brother forever; there were far more important things to do. She'd already watched her daily film with Tyler—they were nearly halfway through their marathon now—and now she had to get ready for her third date with Brandon which was in an hour. Contrary to her prior beliefs, he hadn't asked her to be his girlfriend on the second date but both Candi-Rose and Sasha were sure that she was going to be 'third time lucky' this time 'round. Becoming his girlfriend didn't sound 'lucky' to her, she was sure she could do just fine without him in her life, but she did like how grown-up dating made her feel and it wasn't as if Tyler was ever going to take the plunge and ask her out.

After picking out a nice shirt, skirt (because of the dress code), and a jacket, she quickly changed into them and strolled out of her room, heading downstairs to Candi-Rose's room. The house was relatively quiet which meant that everyone, including Mike and May-Li, was either out or spending time in the garden. Walking through the lounge, she found Joseph and Taz whispering about ghosts or something, but ignored them, opening the door leading to the hallway that housed Chloe and Candi-Rose's room. The bedroom door was open but she knocked anyway.

"Come in," Chloe said, and Jody entered the room to see that it was just her. "Are you here for Candi-Rose?"

"Yeah," she responded, sitting down on the chair in front of Candi-Rose's dresser. She'd only been in this room twice before—once when she and Candi-Rose were messing around with make-up the day after her first date and the other time when Candi-Rose had done her hair and make-up for her second date—but she envied the girls for having their own bathroom and not having to line up for the bog like everyone else did. "Do you know where she is?"

"Erm, I think she went out," Chloe replied, biting her lip. "She told me you're going out with Brandon again. How do you feel?"

"Alright, I guess," Jody answered casually, not really feeling too bothered. But if she wasn't bothered, why was she here to get her hair and make-up done again? She shook her head. Brandon was totally messing with her head. She turned to Chloe who was lying in bed, reading a magazine. "How's Ryan? He was being so weird last week."

"Oh, he's okay," the younger girl assured, smiling brightly though something seemed a little off. "I think being a hero got to his head; he felt like he needed to become the house clown as well."

"We've already got a house clown," Jody stated fondly, frowning when she realised what she'd just said. These days, either Tyler or Brandon occupied her mind on a daily basis and she was beginning to get sick of it. She felt like an idiot girly girl, something she'd never been and never wanted to be. For once, she actually couldn't wait to get back to school and get her mind off the both of them. "I hope everything's okay between the two of you. I got a letter from  _my_  brother today—the one that's in prison. He asked for money, again."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Chloe simply said, offering a sad smile. "What about the other one, though? Aren't you talking to him again?"

Jody sighed. According to Simon, Luke had finished his exams and everything and his lease on his flat was almost up. Truth be told, she was a little worried about where he'd go. Most people in his situation would go back home until they got a graduate job and could afford to move out but their mother was dead, their father was estranged from them, and their totally useless brother was in prison. "He wants to see me next Saturday but I'd have to give up swimming." As lame as the excuse sounded, it was totally legit. She hadn't been swimming in ages. "My social worker told me to get back to him with my decision by Friday." She was a decisive person most of the time but never when it came to her family, whether it was about testifying against Kingsley, sending Denise a birthday card or seeing Luke.

"You could go swimming another time, couldn't you?" Chloe asked, regaining Jody's attention. "Look, Ryan has upset me so many times but at the end of the day, I know he loves me, and most of the time, he makes it up to me. What if your brother's trying to do the same?"

Chloe had a point. Simon had told her over and over that Luke just wanted a chance to explain himself, for her to hear him out. Unlike Kingsley, he'd never used her for money or asked her for a single penny so it wasn't like he had a hidden agenda behind seeing her. What item of value could she possibly give him anyway? She smiled at Chloe, wondering if she ought to see Luke on Saturday after all when two very loud voices travelled into the room from down the hallway.

The first was Candi-Rose's. "Well, if you—"

"Why would I?!" And that was definitely Ryan's. There was a drape blocking the pair from Jody's view but she could tell they were stepping into the room.

"Umm, guys?" Chloe spoke up, "You'v—"

"Chloe, tell your brother to cheer up!" Candi-Rose interjected exasperatedly, dumping a bunch of shopping bags on her bed. "He almost ru—"

"What are you doing here?!" Ryan exclaimed, clearly alarmed. Candi-Rose only just seemed to notice Jody's presence, resembling someone who'd been caught red-handed. Caught doing what, though?

"Ryan!" Chloe chided, "Jody's here to see Candi-Rose."

"And Ryan's here to see you..." Candi-Rose trailed off, her eyes darting between the other three before settling on Jody. "Oh, you need me to do your hair and make-up, don't you?" Jody furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, sensing that the trio were hiding something. Still, as long as it didn't concern her or Tyler, she didn't really care.

"Well, I don't  _need_  you," she muttered, facing the mirror and playing with her hair. Did Brandon like her hair? She knew Tyler did. Ugh, there she went again!

"I'll do it anyway!" Candi-Rose announced cheerfully, sounding like herself again. She grabbed something from one of the shopping bags as Ryan pushed past her, going to sit with Chloe. "What colour do you want me to paint your nails? I think pink would look nice."

Ryan sniggered, whispering something to Chloe as Candi-Rose shot him a withering look. Jody witnessed the exchange, rapping her fingernails on the dressing table. "Why've I got to get my nails done anyway?" she genuinely questioned. She'd never understood why anyone would want to put stuff on their nails. It was stupid. "He won't be staring at them, will he?"

"No, but he will be staring at your lips," Candi-Rose replied in a sing-song voice, wagging her eyebrows. She proceeded to wave a lipstick in her face.

"Do I have to?" she asked, sighing. Lipstick looked so over-the-top on the girls at school. She'd always thought of it as an adult thing or something you tried on when you were at least sixteen. "Don't you have lipgloss or something?"

Candi-Rose fixed her with a stern look. "You  _do_  want to get your first kiss, don't you?"

"What?!" Jody barked, shrinking away from the younger girl. She heard both Ryan and Chloe giggle. Ryan giggling. It was just wrong. Brandon kissing her, especially being her first kiss, was even more wrong. "No, why would you think that?!"

Honestly. Candi-Rose was going to be the death of her one of these days.

.:. QK .:.

Unlike on the first and second dates, Brandon had personally 'collected' Jody from Ashdene Ridge before they'd got on the bus to town, headed for a fancy restaurant. She couldn't help but feel that he was spending too much on her—a girl who wasn't even his girlfriend yet—but let it slide because she was unable to remember the last time she'd eaten at a fancy place. Tyler was often too busy to eat out with her these days and after two subtle rejections from him, she didn't even feel like asking him out for lunch/dinner as mates. Grant had taken her and her mum to a posh place once but it seemed like so long ago that she couldn't even remember much of it. Funnily enough, Brandon sort of reminded her of Grant; a nice guy with money who was going out with someone who probably didn't deserve him. Well, Denise definitely hadn't deserved Grant due to all the lying but was Jody much better? Brandon had no idea that Jody liked someone else just like Grant had been clueless to Denise's criminal and family background.

"We're here," Brandon said gently, rousing her from her thoughts. She attempted to smile, hoping she wasn't grimacing instead, and followed him off the bus. They walked down to the end of the street until they reached the swanky building. She clamped down on her nerves as they went to the desk. "Reservation for two under Brandon Dalton please." Brandon Dalton. That name sounded well posh.

"This way, sir, ma'am," some guy instructed, escorting them to a table for two. How could a fifteen-year-old afford a reservations-only restaurant? And at such short notice too?

As they surveyed the menus, Jody's gaze freely roamed around the room, taking in the extravagance of it all. The other guests all seemed to be adults what with their suits, fancy dresses and glasses of wine. Most care kids could only dream of coming somewhere like this before reaching the age of eighteen. Mike and May-Li did their best to give her and the others a normal life but they'd never be able to bring them all somewhere like this. It wasn't their fault but the best they could do with their council budget was lunch at McDonald's.

"How did you get us a table here?" she finally asked after they ordered their food.

"My mum knows one of the investors," he replied casually, his skin appearing to be flushed. She bit her lip. Typical, modest, Brandon.

"Oh, how did your dad's operation go?" she inquired, recalling him telling her about his dad's wrist operation on their second date which had been a walk in the park (literally).

"It went well," he answered, nodding happily. "Mum was worried to death about the anaesthesia—too much can kill a person—but then again, she's always worried about him. And me."

"It must be nice having parents who love each other," she blurted out, biting her lip and looking down when her words registered in her mind.  _Unbelievable_. She was always putting a damper on their conversations by mentioning her scruples as a care kid. "Sorry, I—"

"No, it's okay," he assured, and she peered up to see a hint of understanding in his eyes. "Living in care can't be easy. I wouldn't be able to handle it." He reached for her hand, carefully watching her as if to gauge her reaction, but she hastily pulled away; all she could think about was the one who should've held her hand in the popcorn bowl. He took the hint pretty well, pulling his own hand away and opting for a small smile. "You've dealt with it pretty well."

She exhaled shortly. What did he really know about her? He had no idea what she was like at home, the monster she'd been before she'd learnt to control her anger. No, only a select few knew the  _real_  Jody Gray. He wouldn't like her if he knew about half the things she'd done in her lifetime. "Only cos of the boxing," she stated bitterly, "I was a wreck before May-Li took me to the gym."

"Speaking of the gym, how come you didn't go at all this week?" he questioned, appearing to be concerned. "You haven't been since I asked you out... Is it because you think my friends are going to take the piss?"

Her eyes widened at the mild profanity. So he was a normal teenager after all. "Nah, nothing like that!" she responded, laughing lightly. She was kind of lying—those first few days, she'd held off from going to the gym just in case things between them didn't go well and ended up becoming awkward, especially since he had way more friends at the gym than she had, but after their second date, she genuinely hadn't had the time. "I wanted to but I was too busy. I've been doing a movie marathon with my best mate this whole week and then there was just other stuff going on at the home."

"Your best mate?" he asked, his eyes lighting up in recognition. "Tyler?"

She tried not to react. "You know Tyler?" When had they even spoken, besides when one had opened the door for the other? Tyler usually didn't reveal his name to random strangers on the doorstep...

"Yeah, he introduced himself to me when I went 'round the house last week," Brandon informed needlessly. Of course. Where else would they have seen each other? Now that she thought about it, Tyler had been fiddling around with the noticeboard in the kitchen when both she and Brandon had been talking in there. "You known him long?"

"Yeah, we grew up together," she replied, remembering how she'd straight up bitten Tyler the day they met. She'd been a completely different person then, always pushing people around and speaking very rudely to everyone. Apparently, he'd had his ups and downs as well, his worst point being when he'd nicked Carmen's stuff and given her a black eye when they were at Burnywood together, a story she didn't believe because there was no way a seven-year-old could beat an eleven-year-old up. "Since I was eight, nearly nine."

"So he's like a big brother to you?" She swallowed uncomfortably. Maybe this was what she got for telling Tyler that she'd pick him as a brother if she could choose her family. Some sort of twisted karma coming back to bite her in the arse nearly two years later. If only she actually saw him that way. If only.

"He might not look it because he's so tall an' all," she managed to say, putting on a smile so fake that it put Oscar-winning actors to shame, "but he's really just six weeks older than me."

She couldn't call Tyler her brother even though she was probably meant to. One of the main reasons she'd been so distraught when she'd realised she fancied him was because it seemed wrong; most people who grew up together since age nine saw each as other as siblings. Where had the two of them gone wrong?

"I thought he was in Year Eleven," Brandon commented, seemingly oblivious to her inner turmoil. Good. It was better that way.

"Tell me about your best mate," she requested, wanting her mind off Tyler once and for all. She couldn't sit here and think about him while on a date with someone else. It was just not done.

Over the next hour, the two of them chatted and ate their food, and Jody finally found out that Brandon got into boxing because he was over-energetic as a child; his worried parents had consulted a few friends who'd suggested boxing as an appropriate outlet. Boxing calmed him down, much like it did her, but perhaps not to the same extent—anger issues trumped hyperactivity by a mile. She also learnt that, like every other only-child she'd met, he was envious of her living in a full house, as if the DG lot were actually her siblings. Ryan as a brother? No thanks, Chloe was welcome to him.

After dinner was over, the two of them strolled to the bus stop together, and she deliberately dug her hands into her pockets so that he wouldn't try to grab her hand again. He was a nice guy and she could see this working but only on her terms. She didn't want to rush things.

"So..." he began, nervously eyeing her up as they reached the stop. His bus home was a different one to hers.

"So..." she repeated, pressing her lips together and giving him a pointed look.

"I've had a great time today and on those other two dates as well," he admitted, smiling shyly. "I think you have too...?" She merely nodded, feeling truthful for the first time today. She'd had a good time, a much better time than she'd expected. "What do you say to becoming my girlfriend?"

"Yes," she responded casually, butterflies exploding in her tummy. Finally, an indication that she did fancy him. Everything was falling into place.

"Cool," he let out, leaning in and brushing his lips against her cheek. She blushed, hoping the streetlights didn't illuminate her too much. It wasn't quite the sort of first kiss Candi-Rose and Sasha had been hoping for but it was one she was comfortable with.

His bus arrived first and she sat on the bus stop bench, waving him off. It was official. She was now someone's girlfriend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I know, I know, the way Brandon asked Jody to be his girlfriend is so cringe but let's not forget that they're teenagers. This is pretty much what most fourteen/fifteen year olds are like; a few dates and BAM(!), they're in a relationship. I'm pretty sure my Year Two boyfriend and I got together after no dates at all LOL. At this point in the story, Jody's more in love with the idea being in love than she is with the actual guy, if you know what I mean. I know some writers tend to write tomboys as cold and distant and not really into guys (because that's apparently exclusive to girly girls) but that is not how I see it. And, oh yeah, the SPaG mistakes in Kingsley's letter are intentional.**


	17. Chapter 17

"All right you horrible lot, into the minibus!" Mike hollered, sparking an onslaught of young people rushing down the stairs and nearly running him over on the way out of the front door. "Charming," he commented mock sarcastically after he picked a swimming bag up off the floor and handed it to its owner, receiving no thanks in return for his efforts. Nevertheless, he grinned and waved bye to May-Li, calling out an estimated time of return to her as he headed for the door.

"Have fun!" May-Li exclaimed, clearly looking forward to the peace and quiet.

Rifling through the filing cabinet, she smiled at Jody who'd witnessed the entire exchange somewhat nervously from Mike's seat in the office as she awaited the arrival of her brother. In the end, she'd almost  _finally_  made her mind up to see him when the call of nature, that dreaded monthly disturbance she hated with a passion, made itself known to her the prior morning and provided her with an excuse to quell her pride if anything should go wrong: she hadn't given up swimming for him, she'd had to forgo it anyway because of the God-awful cramps. She fidgeted in the swivel chair, listening to May-Li prattle on about something when she realised she was being asked a question.

"Err, yeah?" she prompted, completely clueless as to what'd just been said.

May-Li merely smiled sympathetically, closing the top drawer of the filing cabinet and sitting down in her own seat across from Jody's (Mike's). "I was asking if you wanted to make your brother some tea while you're waiting."

"He doesn't like tea," she stated, continuing to fidget. When she'd still lived at home, Luke had never taken tea or coffee, preferring water (though she was sure it was alcohol these days), but Kingsley had been a coffee-addict, drinking it four to fives times a day, every day. She hadn't understood why at the time, being only eight, but now she was pretty sure he'd done it because he'd needed the energy to go on his late-night burgling stints. "Where would I put the tray, anyway?"

"Oh, you don't have to talk to him in here," May-Li said distractedly, clicking her mouse. "The two of you can go into the quiet room. He's not someone you can only see on contact so I don't have to supervise you."

"Oh," Jody let out, having forgotten how it all worked. She hadn't had a visitor, on contact or otherwise, in years (her mother's 'apology' visit notwithstanding). "Yeah, I guess I'll do that." She stopped messing around in the chair, looking over at May-Li. "Can I go and wait in there? Being in here makes me feel like I'm in trouble or something."

"Yeah, of course," May-Li responded with a laugh, tipping her head towards the connecting door between the office and quiet room.

Rising to her feet, Jody practically ran into the quiet room, sighing in relief as her anxiety dropped down a notch or two. It wasn't completely gone, of course, only Luke's arrival could make or break that, but just being in the room gave her a sense of pleasant anticipation; this was the room countless couples had made the life-changing decision to foster or adopt one of the residents, the most recent being Archie's foster parents. In other words, good things happened here and she had no reason to believe that she'd be the first to break that streak. She sat down on the sofa closest to the door, taking her phone out of her pocket (it'd beeped earlier) and reading her most recent message.

_Good luck x_

She quickly wrote a response; he'd sent the message half an hour ago.  _Thanks, I'll need it x_

The transition from being someone's friend to being his girlfriend was a foreign one but after a week of semi-awkward gym hang-outs followed by cute Snaps and sweet, well-worded WhatsApp messages, she found that she could get used to it. She wanted to, even. Having someone she could call her own—not a friend she had to share with others, a care-worker whose attention constantly had to be divided thirteen ways, or a brother she had to wrest away from his girlfriend—was an incredibly novel experience. He was a friend to loads of other teens, a son to two loving parents, but he was boyfriend only to her. A niggling voice in the back of her head reminded her that there was someone else who was best friend only to her but she ignored it; she wanted to be happy today, not upset.

She exhaled deeply, glancing at the time. Luke was cutting it awfully close.

.:. QK .:.

"Jody?"

Said girl looked up from her lap, having hung her head in defeat when Luke hadn't shown at the designated time, and twisted around to see May-Li showing her wayward brother in, nearly fifteen minutes late. She stared at him for a moment as May-Li made herself scarce, taking in his appearance: the smart-casual get-up, the styled hair, and the apologetic expression on his face. God, how long had it been since she'd last seen him? Two, three months, going on four? He looked like a totally different person.

"Hey, sis," he greeted meekly, spookily reminding her of their brother. That was an image she didn't need, especially because Kingsley was the one who used to walk around in fancy clothes, trying to be what he wasn't—Luke had always been a tracksuit and jeans sort of boy.

"Hi," she responded, remaining seated. Hugging him after everything that had gone down between them didn't sit right with her. She hadn't even hugged him at the funeral, one of the most emotional events of her (and maybe his) life. Besides, she was unimpressed by his tardiness. "Sit down."

He did as she told him, sitting on the sofa opposite her. "Sorry, about being late," he started sheepishly, "I got held up by... something."

"Something important, I hope," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. She wouldn't be surprised if his girlfriend was the reason behind his being late. Still, he had eventually made it so that was something.

"Yeah; I've been looking around for a new place," he replied off-handedly. "It's hard finding something affordable. I can't get a proper job until I get my results."

"Are you moving here?" she asked quietly, unable to stop herself from frowning. "Is that why you wanted to meet up? Because you were coming here anyway?"

It would make sense. After all, why would he suddenly want to see her after months of no contact? It was probably the reason he'd dropped by at the cemetery as well; not because he'd wanted to but because it was on the way to one of the properties he was looking at.

"No!" he protested hastily, holding a hand up. "I mean, yeah, I'm looking to move back here for now but it's not why I came to Pottiswood today." He dropped his hand, his features softening. "I came here today to see you."

She wasn't about to be fooled so easily by his sweet words. One brother had already duped her like that. "Simon told me you wanted a chance to explain yourself," she told him, crossing her arms. "Go on, then."

He took a deep breath, clasping his hands together. "Okay..." he trailed off, nodding. "When I went off to uni, it was like a chance to start all over again, a shot at a new life. I can't exactly describe it—you'll understand what I mean when it's your turn, I guess—but when I made new friends there, I didn't want them to find out about my past, especially my time in the STC. They're all from normal or even good backgrounds, Jodes." She raised an eyebrow at the nickname; only her friends could use that. "They wouldn't have understood why I did what I did, even if I'd told them that Mum and Kingsley dragged me into it."

"So you erased our family?"

"Not exactly. I managed to dodge questions about our family that first year and everything went well. It wasn't until summer rolled round and you told me what Kingsley had done to you that I decided enough was enough. I made my mind up to erase him then and there but when I found out he was in prison again a few months later, I lost it. I called Mum up and confronted her about the way she'd raised him but she turned around on me and called me a bad son for not coming back to see her in the summer. I told her that I couldn't come back because I was working a summer job which was true. I needed the money. I wasn't burgling her house to make money off her like Kingsley had done. But she wouldn't admit that Kingsley turned out the way he did cos of his upbringing; she said he got it from Dad."

Dad? She pulled at her sleeve, recalling her run-in with their father at the supermarket all those months ago. It was irrelevant now, she supposed, since she'd decided she didn't want or need such a father in her life but what if Luke did? Would withholding the information be wrong? What information, though? She didn't know for sure that Gray lived in Pottiswood; he could've just been in the area that day on some sort of visit or stopover. She didn't want to get his hopes up for no reason.

"I erased Mum," Luke continued sadly, looking down, seemingly oblivious to her discomfort. "I was ashamed of her. The next time my mates asked about my family, I told them that Mum was dead, and I didn't mention having a brother."

"But you erased me as well," she said dryly, all of her old insecurities about being unwanted by her family rising to the surface. She felt like a freshly abandoned eight-year-old girl all over again.

"I'm sorry," he apologised morosely, his line of sight still fixed upon the coffee table in between them. "I couldn't mention you at first because then I would've had to tell them you were in care and why."

"Because I'm an embarrassing little secret?" she questioned, her heart plummeting. "Shameful?"

"No," he denied immediately, his head snapping up as his eyes met hers. "Not you," he stated firmly, his eyes blazing. "Mum was the shameful one, the embarrassing one. It's not your fault you're in care. I guess I could've told them you were in care after telling them that Mum was dead but then they would've asked why you weren't being looked after by Dad instead. And I didn't want to talk about him because what he did was even more embarrassing."

Embarrassing? Hardly. It was much more common, and thus less embarrassing, than being in care. Johnny and Tee's dad had walked out. Ryan and Chloe's. Sasha and Dexter's. Murphy's. "Lots of dads walk out, Luke. It's normal up here."

"That's not what I meant," he said, shaking his head, "but, anyway, I didn't mean to shut you out of my life. I was always going to tell them about you after you left care."

"Luke!" she exclaimed, irritated. Her fifteenth birthday was still two months away. Was he so out of touch with her that he'd forgotten how old she was? "That's years away!"

His eyebrows knotted together in confusion. "Aren't you leaving care at sixteen?"

"Huh!" she let out in disbelief. "And going where?! Even you're struggling to find a place and you're twenty-one!" He blinked, appearing to be completely flummoxed. "We can stay here until we turn eighteen." Okay, so Carmen and Tee had been allocated a place by the council, and apparently, all local councils had to support care leavers until they were twenty-five but that was beside the point.

"Oh, I didn't know that."  _Clearly._ She refrained from rolling her eyes.

"I guess I get why you cut Mum and Kingsley off," she admitted softly, remembering how she'd also severed their family ties. While his way of putting their family behind him was over-dramatic and dishonest, it was still the same principle. Kinda. She could forgive him for not telling his mates about her but deleting her number was a different story. "But you should've fessed up about me when you started dating your girlfriend. I just don't get why you continued to hide the truth."

"Millie's... difficult," he confessed, wincing. "She flips out over small things." Like her, Jody realised, and like their mother. People always said that women were attracted to men who were like their fathers, though she was certain Ty— _Brandon_  was nothing like Gray. Did it work the same way with mothers and sons? "I've known her since the beginning of uni but we didn't start going out until this year. She would've, I don't know, got angry about me not telling her in the first place."

"She wouldn't be wrong," she muttered coldly. Really, Luke still could've told his mates about her existence at the beginning without revealing that she was in care. It wasn't as if they would want to come down to Pottiswood to see where she (or any of Luke's other family members, for that matter) lived. "Why does she read your texts anyway? Why haven't you got a lock on your phone?" Even Taz had a lock on her phone, though Mike and May-Li weren't particularly happy about it.

"I have got a lock but I unlock it for her," he answered pathetically, shrugging his shoulders. "She says I must be hiding something if I don't let her read them. You see why I had to delete your number, now?"

"No, not really!" she blurted out, shocked by how controlling this Millie bitch sounded. Could he not see that she was basically a younger version of Denise? She shook her head, sighing. "Man up, Luke! She's bad news!" She knew he'd always been a bit spineless and easy to push around—Kingsley was constantly ordering him around, making him do his dirty work for him for as long as she could remember—but she thought he would've grown out of it by now.

"She's not that bad," he protested weakly, straightening his back. "And she loves me. That's not easy to find."

She blinked, his words striking her right where it hurt for some reason.  _Love_. She hated thinking about it and had no reason to; people her age didn't love their boyfriends/girlfriends, and most teenage relationships went nowhere... but Luke was twenty-one. A grown man. He probably needed a girlfriend—he had never lasted long without female advice—to get through life in a way that other, more independent people didn't, but not one like Millie.

"Luke, you can do better," she insisted, almost pleadingly. "She doesn't sound right for you."

"Jody, please," he interjected seriously. "You're too young to understand all this." She wanted to stand up and tell him that, for his information, she had a boyfriend and therefore  _did_  understand such things, but ultimately kept her mouth shut. A relationship between a fourteen- and fifteen-year-old was not the same as one between two people who were in their early twenties.

" _Fine_ ," she reluctantly gave in, averting her gaze away from him. "When are you going to tell her about me?"

"After we get a place."

"I'm sorry," she snapped after a pause, "did you just say  _we_?"

He looked taken aback by her sudden hostility. "Err, yeah. Me and Millie." She nearly laughed. He was totally ruining his life and he couldn't even see it. It was ironic that he'd cut the toxic Jacksons out of his life only to go off with the equally, or even more so, venomous Millie instead. Seemingly realising he was in hot water with her, he asked, "Do you want me to leave?"

"I think we're done for today," she responded matter-of-factly, meeting his now-hopeful eyes again.

"For today?" he repeated optimistically, leaning forward. "So there'll be another time?"

"Yeah," she replied, nodding slowly. "Maybe only after you tell Millie and your other mates the truth, though," she added, making him frown a little. "I don't like feeling like some sort of dirty secret."

"I understand," he assured, standing up and stretching. She stayed rooted to her seat, even as he looked expectantly at her. It was still too soon for a hug. "Right," he mumbled, appearing to understand how this was going to work. "I'll be off, then."

As he walked to the connecting door, she stood up and called out his name, suddenly recalling the mystery man at the cemetery. For her own safety and his, she had to know that this wasn't some thug who was going to try to get revenge against Kingsley by using them the way Faith's brother's ex-gang had tried to use Faith to get to him. Not that Kingsley would give a shit about either of them being harmed because of him.

"Yeah?" he prompted, turning around to face her with his hand resting on the door handle.

"Do you know anyone who'd visit Mum's grave other than us?" she inquired, "and Kingsley."

"No," he answered, appearing to be totally clueless. "But her neighbour did tell me that she was seeing someone like a week before she died."  _Grant._  It definitely hadn't been him, though. There was no way he'd even know that she was dead. "Why, is something wrong?"

"Someone left flowers at her grave. Someone who wasn't me or you."

He bit his lip. "There's only one other guy I can think of," he told her, squinting, "but it wouldn't be him; he left all of us behind ages ago." She froze, the memories of the supermarket run-in coming to the fore of her mind. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah, see you," she called back distractedly, letting herself drop back onto the sofa as he left the room.

Why hadn't she made this connection before, especially since the man had allegedly asked after Denise's children? His  _own_  children, perhaps... Now that Luke had put the idea in her mind, she couldn't shake it off. She knew it made no sense for a man who'd walked out on his kids more than a decade ago to suddenly come back looking for them but what other explanation could there be? Surely, Gray's appearance in a Pottiswood supermarket and the appearance of a man looking for her and her brothers at the cemetery couldn't be a mere coincidence?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I was going to have Luke reveal that he was on a date with his girlfriend at the same restaurant as Jody and Brandon in the previous chapter and had therefore seen her but decided against it. It felt too manufactured.**


	18. Chapter 18

Father's Day. Yet another occasion most people happily celebrated, taking the ability to be able to do so for granted, while the children at Ashdene Ridge spent the day reminiscing about the fathers who'd abandoned them or imagining what their fathers looked like and what might've been. Prior to the current year, Jody had never been one of those kids, instead reserving all of that wistfulness and anger for the next Mother's Day but this Mother's Day had been spent watching from the sidelines as Tyler rebelled against Mike and May-Li's rules and thus all of that pent up anger and wistfulness had to go somewhere. Why not on the coward who'd left the family more than a dozen years ago only to reappear and lurk around the cemetery, searching for his lost progeny?

She sighed in frustration. She didn't know a thing about him. Where would she even start? She walked past Finn who was blathering nonsense about some Billy McLaine, stopping in front of the door to the narrow porch and wondering what to do next. Going to the gym was the most plausible option but something told her that the intense fire blazing underneath her skin wouldn't abate after throwing a mere few punches at a sparring partner or punching bag. No, she needed to land a good, hard one on the actual culprit.

"Jodes?" Tyler called, coming out of the lounge. "What's up?" She didn't answer, her mind going a mile a minute. Was it time to ask Mike and May-Li to locate Kingsley Gray? They could probably do it within a matter of days, especially if he was in or around Pottiswood, but then they'd be angry when they later found out why she'd asked them to, wouldn't they? "Are you going to see Brandon  _again_?"

Her eyes shot up to meet his, and she glared at him. Something about the way he'd wearily said 'again' rubbed her the wrong way. He'd practically pushed her into Brandon's arms more than three weeks ago so why was he complaining now? "No, believe it or not, my life doesn't revolve around him!" she snapped. She didn't need this now, not when Candi-Rose and Floss' shipping wars were beginning to grate on her nerves.

"Woah, alright!" he exclaimed, crossing his arms. "I was just trying to make conversation!" He fixed her with a look then, narrowing his eyes a little. "What's wrong?"

Oh, of course, he could still read her like an open book. He wouldn't be Tyler Lewis if he couldn't. "Nothing," she lied, twisting the door handle and pulling the door open. The cemetery was her best bet if she was going to find Gray without official help. "There's somewhere I need to be."

Intending to leg it to the cemetery as quickly as possible, she hurried out of the house and down the driveway when she heard Tyler calling her name out from behind her. Turning around, she was surprised to see him running up to her. As he came to a stop next to her, she shot him a questioning look.

"Don't you need a navigator?" he asked, dangling his phone in front of her face.  _Oh_.

She smiled wryly. "Hmm, I was just going to do that," she fibbed, reaching into her pocket but faltering when she remembered she had no mobile data left. She proceeded to retract her hand and clear her throat, sheepishly peering up at him.

"Shall we?" he proposed, clicking on something on his phone. "Where to?"

"Wait," she said, digging her hands into her pockets. "Aren't you seeing your mum today?"

"Nah, not today," he answered, rubbing his nose. "She called Mike to say she's not well. Not seeing her for another fortnight."

She raised an eyebrow; he didn't even appear to be upset. When Sally had first decreased the frequency of their meetings from weekly to fortnightly, he'd gone off into a bout of sulking that didn't end until she did her level best to cheer him up but now he didn't even care that he essentially wasn't going to see his mother for an entire month... When had he grown up?

"So, where to?" he repeated, his finger hovering over the touchscreen.

It took her a moment or two to recall the name of the cemetery. After all, she'd only been there twice.

.:. QK .:.

After approximately forty minutes of walking and occasionally getting lost thanks to the way Tyler was holding his phone and thus screwing up its GPS, the two best friends finally reached the wrought iron gates guarding the cemetery. Standing outside, Jody noted that the entire place looked a little creepier this time 'round, though she had no idea why. It wasn't even dark or dreary. In fact, the weather was better than it had been the last two times she was here.

"Are you going to tell me why we're here?" Tyler questioned somewhere from her right as they entered the fray. "You didn't even buy any flowers."

"I'm not here to lay flowers," she mumbled, scanning her surroundings for a woman who looked like she frequented a cemetery. What did such a woman look like anyway? A poor soul who didn't have a life?

Other than a pair of male gravediggers, there were three women and one man scattered throughout the cemetery, actively mourning their loved ones. One woman, in particular, was wailing loudly over a grave that definitely hadn't been there the last time, effectively ruling herself out. That left the old woman standing quietly in front of an equally old looking grave and the young(er) woman kneeling in front of another grave, handling the flowers in the grave's allocated floral tin. Charlie hadn't described the woman who'd asked about the Jacksons at all so she had nothing to go on. Nevertheless, she decided to approach the younger woman first. Old people (besides PoPo) were always such a bother what with their bad hearing and forgetfulness.

"Excuse me," she spoke up as she approached the woman with Tyler in tow.

The woman turned around to face her, and Jody immediately regretted her earlier conjecture that the woman didn't have a life; the unmistakable and undeniable baby bump she was sporting said otherwise. She really hoped the grave didn't belong to the father of the baby but given the birth and death dates—he was recently deceased and around the same age the woman appeared to be—she wasn't so sure. "Yes?" the young woman responded, the blank expression on her face not exactly instilling Jody with confidence.

"Are you the one who was asked about Denise Jackson's children?" she asked uncertainly, nearly sure that she had the wrong woman. It seemed like she would have to talk to the old woman after all.

Luckily for her, the young woman's eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh, you're the girl who visited her grave, aren't you?" she questioned, looking as if she'd snapped out of a trance. "Sorry, I was"—she smiled sadly at the grave in front of her, shaking her head—"never mind." She looked back up at Jody. "How can I help?"

"Err," Jody began, momentarily glancing at Tyler out of pure habit to see that he was regarding her in confusion. Right. She hadn't told him a single thing yet. When had she started to hide things from him? She forced herself to break eye contact, reverting her gaze back onto the woman. "My friend told me what you told her about the man who was asking you questions."

"Oh yes," the woman replied, nodding. "He approached me a couple of months ago to ask if Denise Jackson's children had visited recently. The pastor told him to ask me because I'm here most days, more often than him. Anyway, he pointed the grave out to me and I remembered seeing a young man there just a few days before but since I didn't speak to him, I didn't know if he was Denise's son. I told him that and then he just left without another word. And then, of course, I saw you a couple of days later and wondered if you were her daughter. I asked your friend as much when she next visited but she didn't tell me."

"Okay..." Jody trailed off, racking her brains for a way to find out if the man was Gray or not. She obviously had no photos of him and he didn't have any social media profiles (not when she'd last checked, anyway).

"Jody?" Tyler whispered, disrupting her train of thought. "Please tell me you're not spying again."

" _I'm_  not the one doing the spying this time," she told him through gritted teeth, turning to him. "Someone else is spying on my mum's grave and on me, Luke and Kingsley."  _Kingsley_. Her brother who bore a strong resemblance to their father and did happen to have social media with tons of pictures (he was pretty vain, after all). "Give me your phone." Tyler looked a little taken aback but complied, nonetheless. She quickly went to Google and typed in  _Kingsley Jackson_ , locating countless photos of him within a matter of seconds. Judging from his hairstyles, some of them were even from just before his second imprisonment. "Did he look like him?" she inquired, holding the phone out to the woman.

The young woman squinted at the photo presented to her long and hard but sighed. "It has been two months and I've only seen him once," she admitted regretfully. "Maybe he looks a little like him. I don't really remember his face but he was definitely dark haired... and good looking for someone his age." _Good looking._  It was nothing conclusive but Denise had oft said that Kingsley was her most beautiful child. His many girlfriends over the years had seemed to agree with her.

Jody sighed in defeat, handing the mobile back to its owner with a mutter of 'thanks'. "How old did he look?"

"Late forties, maybe early fifties..." The right age. Denise would've been forty-six this year and Gray wouldn't have been any younger than that, though not significantly older either.

"Did he say how he knew Denise? Or her children?"

"No," the young woman answered confidently. "But he did spend a good amount of time observing her grave before even approaching me. I thought that maybe she was very dear to him."

It was difficult for Jody not to snort right then. Denise had been anything but dear to Gray.

"Thanks," she told the young woman, dejectedly turning to a still-confused Tyler and tipping her head towards the exit.

"Wait!" the young woman interjected, interrupting Tyler who was about to say something. Jody appeased him with her eyes before giving the other woman a pointed look. "The pastor who was on duty that day is in the chapel right now. I'm sure the man would've left him a number just in case Denise's children turned up."

Oh, of course. Why hadn't she thought of that? Thanking the young woman again, she proceeded to make her way to the chapel, telling Tyler she'd explain everything to him later. It'd take ages to tell him the full story anyway.

.:. QK .:.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were looking for your dad?"

Jody looked up from the phone number the pastor had given her, biting her lip as she tried to formulate a response. This wasn't something she wanted to discuss right now because she still had to find out where Gray lived and had no idea how to do so, but telling Tyler nothing at all seemed harsh and uncalled for. It was no way to treat a best friend, that was for sure, even one she'd been having a difficult relationship with as of late. Her withholding things from him really wasn't helping much. But what could she say? That she was looking for her dad because she wanted to punch him? Even he, the person who knew about her temper better than anyone, wouldn't look too favourably upon that explanation.

The pastor had been most forthcoming after she'd told him that she was one of the children Gray had been looking for and, fortunately for her, he'd confirmed that the mystery man had in fact been Gray; apparently, the man had told the pastor he was looking for his  _and_  Denise's children. However, the most he'd been able to do for her was give her the mobile phone number her father had left him. It wasn't even a landline so she couldn't look it up on some sort of register. She was at a total standstill.

"Well," she began, taking in her best friend's expectant expression and realising he wasn't going to let her get out of this one without answering. "You've never talked about wanting to find yours... Not really."

"Because my mum didn't know him," he said, steering her towards the next turn. She'd nearly gone the wrong way; she still didn't know her way around this area. "You know that."

Indeed, she did know; a few years ago, he'd told her himself that his parents had met at a party and that he was the result of what adults called a one-night stand. Strangely enough, she'd always envied him for that. If she'd been conceived in similar circumstances, at least she would've been able to mollify herself with the knowledge that her dad wasn't in her life because he'd never known about her in the first place. It would've been nowhere near as painful as knowing that her dad had consciously walked away from her.

"But that's the thing," she stated, absent-mindedly playing with the zip on her jacket. "Your dad isn't around because he doesn't know he has a son. Mine isn't around through choice. How could I admit to even wanting to find him? It's so lame."

"It's not lame," he countered softly, shaking his head. "If I was in your situation, I'd still want to know. Especially if Mum was dead."

"It's easy for you to say," she muttered, frowning. "You'll never know how it feels to be dumped like that... By either parent."

That was the sad difference between her and Tyler, the sad reality of her life. Sally had to put him in care because she was ill, and only as a last resort. Denise had all too readily ditched her to escape police custody and had always been a shit mum anyway, never failing to let her know from the very beginning that she was a most unwelcome accident. Given what he'd told her of his parents, Tyler had to have been an accident too but his mother had never told him that—he was clearly a happy accident. They'd never be the same in that regard; he wasn't unwanted by either parent but she was unwanted by both.

"Maybe not," he digressed, "but I do know what it's like not to have a dad. To have to imagine what he looks like and what he would've been like if he was around."

She bristled. By the time she was old enough to realise that Gray was a piece of shit, she'd never fantasised about him being in her life again. Kingsley had made sure of that.

"You know what one of my earliest memories is?" she asked, shivering despite the warm atmosphere. "Not Mum being nice to me or even her scrubbing me to death in a bathtub. No. It's Kingsley losing his shit at me for the very first time." Once had been enough to sear the horrifying image of her raving-mad big brother into her mind. "I must've been in Reception or Year One. The teacher asked us to draw a picture, any picture, just something that made us happy. And back then, there was only one thing, one silly fantasy that made me happy. That day, I took my picture home to show Mum. I was so excited. But she went off to bed straight after bringing me home so I showed it to Kingsley instead." She took a deep breath, her eyes stinging.

"What happened then?"

"He pushed me on the floor and ripped the picture up right in front of me. He'd already stopped being nice to me by then but he'd never been violent, just indifferent, so I was shocked," she narrated hoarsely, wrapping her arms around herself. "He was so mad... I thought he was gonna kill me, but he obviously didn't. What he did do, though, was tell me never to think about  _that bastard_  again. He said that there was no place in our lives for the man who'd walked out on us for"—she wavered, recalling her brother's disgusting choice of words—"fresh pussy."

Tyler swallowed deeply, visibly disturbed by her story, but managed to say, "He shouldn't have done that. You were only a kid... and it was just a picture. I think I drew me, my mum, and my dad together as well, at one point."

"Yeah, well, he stopped caring about everything when he joined that gang," she stated somberly. "He couldn't care less that me and Luke were just kids or that Mum was... our mum." She sighed, shaking her head. "Anyway, looking for that man feels like a betrayal to Kingsley and to Mum, even though they've both betrayed me loads of times." She purposely left out the fact that she was searching for Gray with the intent to harm him. For some reason, looking for Gray for such a purpose still felt like betraying the disbanded Jackson family. She'd thought she'd left them, with the exception of Luke, behind for good but she clearly hadn't. Not yet.

"You don't need to worry about betraying them anymore, though," Tyler piped up, gently touching her arm and stopping her in her tracks in the middle of a quiet footpath. "Kingsley's in prison—"

"and Mum's dead, I know," she finished, having heard his comforting reassurances enough times to know them by heart. It never got old, them finishing each other's sentences like that. Not in the creepy Trent twins way, of course, but just enough to receive raised eyebrows from the others. Not that anyone else in the house besides Floss looked upon them as a couple anymore. No, it was Jandon all round now.

"You can find out where he lives using his number, you know," he informed, waving his phone at her like he'd done earlier in the day. "There are a couple of sites you can put his number in and get his address from."

"Yeah, right," she said, moving out of the way as an old woman barged through the gap in between them. "That only works for landlines."

"No, it works for mobiles too."

She raised a challenging eyebrow at him. " _Prove it_."

"Alright," he fired back sassily, moving closer to her—perhaps too close—and typing her number in the search bar of a dodgy looking website. She couldn't help but smile, thinking it was sweet that he knew her number by heart. She, of course, knew his as well. Her eyes widened in surprise as the results came up with the name of their house.

"No way," she breathed, spooked. "How does it know that?"

"I don't really know but I messed around on it one day and it knew literally something about everyone. Mum. My mates from school. Mike." He pressed his lips together. "Only problem is that it doesn't usually come up with house names cos most houses don't have names. Sometimes it gives you the street name but mostly it gives you the first half of a postcode." She slumped her shoulders in disappointment. The first half of a postcode would only give her an area, not a specific street. "But there are other sites that track people through their numbers _and_  names. If you give me his name, I can put that in with his number."

Hmm. What did she have to lose? "Okay," she conceded, nodding at his phone. "Put in Kingsley Gray."

He shot her an astonished look as if to say 'couldn't they have named your brother something else?' before typing in the name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I don't like how this one turned out.**


	19. Chapter 19

Immediately after leaving the dining hall at lunchtime, Jody sat on a quad bench, multitasking as she coloured in a hand-made birthday card for Tyler while listening to one of her friends, Aliyah, telling the others what she'd done for Eid on the previous Friday. She realised that she perhaps looked a little childish sitting there with all of her colouring pencils out but she did like to tap into her artistic side at times, the sad, old painting of Mike she'd done for Floss' flopped exhibition a couple of years ago being what she considered her best (and only) masterpiece to date. Besides, Tyler deserved something nice from her after helping her figure out where Gray lived. In fact, he was going to accompany her on her revenge trip later on in the week.

"Is it true, Jody?" Aliyah asked curiously. "Jamie skipped school on Friday?"

"Yeah," she replied plainly, not taking her eyes off her work. "He probably did it cos he knew you wouldn't be in."

Her friends burst into fits of giggles. Jody rolled her eyes albeit fondly. The girls she chose to hang around in school with weren't girly girls, per se, but they weren't total tomboys like her either. She was okay with it, though, because there weren't very many girls like her in their school anyway. They, at least, didn't waste all of their time constantly talking about boys like the other, more popular girls did, though James Dunn, a popular boy, and one of Tyler's friends, who had a thing for Aliyah despite knowing that she didn't date out of respect for her religion, was an exception.

"Are you throwing a party for Tyler tomorrow?" another friend, Beth, questioned. "Or did you already celebrate it yesterday?"

"He didn't want a fuss," Jody responded, sharpening one of her pencils. "And we don't usually do parties unless the actual birthday's on a weekend. None of us has a birthday on a weekend this year so no parties."

"Just as well," came an interjection from Brad, yet another one of her mates who'd seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He shoved past the girls, bantering with them as he sat down next to Jody. Jody raised an eyebrow at him, pulling her stuff closer to her as he chucked his massive backpack on the table. "I heard that Tyler spent Saturday morning with Bill's sister, and that's enough of a celebration, believe me."

She froze, nearly dropping her pencil as an ugly gut-churning sensation hit her. "Bill's sister? Natalie?" Natalie was in Year Eleven. Why would she go out with a nearly fifteen-year-old? Wasn't that illegal?

"Nah, Hannah," Brad answered, "The one that's in Year Nine."

Tyler had been with her yesterday. The entire day. He hadn't thought to tell her anything? That just wasn't fair; she'd told him about Brandon from the very beginning. Her stomach turned at the thought of him hanging out with some girl while she'd been sitting at home, thinking he was doing a shift at the radio station. Oh, what did she sound like right now? A housewife who'd just found out her husband was cheating instead of being at his 'business meetings'? Her thoughts were borderline ridiculous—she was Jody Gray, not Mrs Tyler Lewis—but his deception hurt all the same. Why hadn't he told her, even afterwards? Had it turned out to be a disaster or something?

"You didn't know?" her friend April asked, and Jody caught on that her hurt was showing on her face. "I thought you did."

"No; he didn't tell me," she admitted quietly, heat rushing to her face. She didn't know why the admission was embarrassing but it was. As she picked up her hand-made card and threw it into her schoolbag along with her pencil case, April's last few words suddenly hit her. "Wait... You knew?"

"Yeah, Chris told me," April replied as if it was obvious, referring to her boyfriend. "His brother's in Hannah's class. Apparently, he was there when Tyler asked her out. On Friday." Beth murmured in agreement, saying something about how her Year Nine cousin had told her the same.

 _Friday_. Some of her friends, mere classmates to Tyler, had known since fucking Friday but she, his best friend, was only just finding out now. She looked up at Brad, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "Do you know how it went? Maybe he didn't tell me because he didn't want me taking the piss."

Brad shrugged. "Dunno; I'd have to ask Bill."

"Oh, isn't that her?!" Aliyah hissed, and Jody speedily followed her line of sight to see a trio of girls walking through the quad.

Her friends continued to discuss Tyler's date in hushed whispers but all she could do was stare at the entourage, the slim and fashionable (even in a school uniform) dark-haired girl standing out amongst the two short and skinny brunettes flanking her. Her heart sunk as she realised why Tyler had decided to ignore his feelings for her. Hannah looked just like her sister Natalie: tall, gorgeous, and totally his type.

.:. QK .:.

"Wow, you're on fire today!" Brandon commented, clearly impressed as Jody took out all of her anger and frustration on the punching mitts he was holding up in front of her. She'd been going at it for the last thirty minutes, and she could tell that Brandon was getting a little tired, but even though her own arms were beginning to ache, she couldn't bring herself to stop. The emotion that she'd repressed from lunchtime, through her walk back to the house with the object of her aff—anger, until the moment she'd stepped into the gym had manifested itself into some sort of fuel that she felt could keep her going for another few hours.

Tyler rarely made her this angry and she couldn't really understand why she was this pissed off. Sure, it hurt that he hadn't told her about his date, but this wasn't even the first time he'd done this; back when he'd fancied Chanelle, he hadn't told her a thing and she'd had to hear about it from Carmen, of all people. She'd been his best friend back then as well. Really, what was the difference this time 'round? She could stand around all day and ask herself that question over and over but, deep down, she already knew the answer: back then, Tyler had been more on the 'brother' end of the best friend spectrum but, up until recently, he'd been on the other end, the end he really should've drifted away from by now because she'd been seeing someone else for nearly a month.

Why was she doing this to herself? She looked at Brandon, sweet, sweet Brandon who fancied her and was an all-around good companion. She fancied him too, he was her boyfriend, for God's sake, and enjoyed his company a lot, so why was she still dwelling on her feelings of the past like a complete idiot? If anything, after the initial hurt (at being shut out as a  _friend_ ), she should've been happy that Tyler had found someone like she had. Maybe, after a few more dates, Hannah would become his girlfriend and the  _feelings_  would never affect their friendship again. However, instead of evoking any semblance of positive emotion in her, the very idea of him having another woman in his life only served to rattle her.

The sobering realisation made her abruptly stop what she was doing, and she ignored the questioning glances from Brandon and the others as she dropped down onto the crash mat beneath her feet. She heaved, her heart racing as she attempted to catch her breath. Brandon joined her on the mat, sidling up to her.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, concerned. "Has someone at the home said something?"

"No, no one's  _said_  anything," she answered dryly. Rather, it was what Tyler  _hadn't_  said to her.

He nodded, trying again. "Done something, then? Only, you were throwing a lot of weight in your punches, and you only do that when you're really angry."

She laughed under her breath. They'd been together less than three weeks and he'd already seen her angry enough times to be able to make such a statement. She needed to fix up. "It's nothing serious, really."

"Why don't you tell me about it?"

She blinked. They didn't really talk much let alone about serious things. She didn't know about him but she had no clue about the protocol regarding dating, like how much of a friend a boyfriend or girlfriend was supposed to be. Friends were confidants, that was clear, but how much could one confide in a boyfriend or girlfriend before it became too much? Everyone knew that vulnerability was a huge turn-off and no one wanted to be in a relationship with a bag full of issues. Brandon was her friend no longer so she couldn't vent to him about the petty problems in her life. However, since he was asking...

"A friend kept something from me," she finally confessed, choosing her words carefully. "Something I didn't keep from h—them when I was in the same situation." He didn't need to know that her friend was a guy lest he somehow figured out something she didn't want him to know. "Don't know what to do now."

"Have you asked them why they kept it from you?"

"No, believe it or not, I'm not looking for a fight." He stared back at her, confused. "This friend might take a confrontation the wrong way."

Truth was, she was afraid she'd blurt her true (past) feelings out to Tyler and end up making everything between them awkward again. She hated it when they didn't talk and it'd happened enough times this year to last her a lifetime, but she didn't see a confrontation going any other way. Either one of them would put their foot in it and ruin the friendship for good.

"Well, what can I say? You've just got to do it," Brandon told her with a smile. "I mean, we wouldn't be together right now if I never plucked up the courage to ask you out." He had a point. "How are you going to find out your friend's reasons for keeping secrets if you don't ask why?"

She smiled weakly, flinching slightly as he put an arm around her, aware of the many sets of eyes watching them. A pang of guilt tugged at her conscience. He wouldn't be giving her this advice if he knew the full truth.

.:. QK .:.

Later that evening, long after returning from the gym, Jody kicked back and watched some TV with the others, including Tyler. Gorging on ice-cream, which had drawn a few funny looks from the others in the lounge by the time she'd started her second bowl, she sat there on the sofa next to him, subtly giving him the chance to take her aside and tell her about his date. However, from the moment he'd stepped foot in the room, he'd seemed intent on acting as if it'd never happened. Right now, her only consolation was that he hadn't told anyone else in the house either otherwise someone would've said something by now.

"What's wrong with you today?" he asked lowly, eyeing her third bowl of chocolate chip ice-cream. "You're acting weird."

"Oh, you think?" she replied sarcastically, not even sparing him a glance. "I wonder why."

While she so badly felt like dropping the foreign passive-aggressive act and coming right out with her problem like she usually would, she restrained herself, wanting him to bring up the topic of the date himself. She couldn't believe he was this dense, seemingly oblivious to what was bothering her when he was the author of her troubles in the first place. Maybe he didn't know her as well as she'd thought he did. The prior day, when they'd worked together to track down Gray, felt like a lifetime ago. How could they be so in sync one day and...  _not_... the next?

"Okay..." he trailed off awkwardly, turning away from her. A few seconds of stifling tension passed between them, threatening her to open her mouth and yell at him, when reprieve came in the form of his phone going off. He audibly sighed in relief (?) before turning to her and whispering, "I've got to take this."

"Go ahead," she said quietly, right before shoving another spoon of ice-cream down her raw throat. She was never going to be able to work these calories off, she knew, but comfort eating felt good.

As Tyler left the lounge to answer his call, Floss sat down in his seat and pushed a card and blue gel pen towards Jody. "Sign."

"Alright," she muttered, almost snatching the pen and card and proceeding to sign in the messiest scrawl ever. Her personal card to him would be even worse if he didn't fess up by then. Handing the card back to Floss, she trained her eyes on the TV again, vaguely registering the others decide to play two on two pool.

"Jody," Floss whispered, interrupting Jody's focus as the others walked past them, presumably on the way to the pool table.

"What?" she mumbled, putting her bowl of ice-cream down. She couldn't take it anymore.

"Are you going out with Brandon again?"

Her eyes immediately flew to the younger girl's apprehensive face. How was her relationship with Brandon anyone else's business? "Why do you want to know?" She hadn't really told anyone besides Candi-Rose (and Sasha) that Brandon was her boyfriend but from the way the others whispered 'Jandon', she thought that they all knew. So why did Floss feel the need to ask?

"I thought you would've stopped by now," Floss divulged, appearing to be serious for once in her life. It was a queer situation.

"Why?"

"Because you and Tyler belong together."

She didn't know if it was because of Tyler keeping things from her or because she'd had a little too much ice-cream and now felt queasy but she clenched her jaw, her blood suddenly boiling with anger. "Not this again!" she exclaimed, her voice tinged with irritation. She heard a few sniggers from the pool table, the boys, especially Ryan and Alex, no doubt amused by her stroppiness, but she pushed on, glaring at Floss. "How many times have I got to tell you that me and Tyler are just  _mates_?!" Floss shrunk back, actually looking a little scared, which wasn't like her at all. Jody sighed, instantly feeling bad. "Look," she started, dropping her voice a notch or two, "how long have you known me and Tyler?"

Floss appeared to be a little surprised by the question but nevertheless answered, "Umm, six years?"

"Exactly," Jody responded, gently nodding her head. "I kinda get how everyone else thinks, or used to think, that there was something between me and Tyler but I don't get how you can think like that. You've seen us grow up together." She had no idea where this was coming from but from the way the words effortlessly tumbled out of her mouth, she supposed this had always bugged her a bit, at least on a subconscious level. "Like brother and sister."

"Brother and sister?" Floss repeated in disbelief, apparently back to being herself again. "Yeah, right," she said, crossing her arms and giving Jody a pointed look. "By the way, Kazima thought you two were gonna get together too and she saw you two 'grow up'"—she did quotation marks with her fingers—"as well."

Jody bit her lip, trying to remember when Kaz had moved in. After Frank had moved out? No, just before...? "Kaz met us when we were, like, eleven. That's different; she probably didn't know how long we'd known each other. You can catch feelings at that age... Tyler had his first crush at that age."

"Oh yeah, that girl he fired me for!  _Twice_!" Floss nearly shouted, flaring her nostrils. "But whatever. What you're saying makes no sense. You're just making excuses."

"No, I'm not," Jody protested, floundering as she searched for an example to explain to Floss. She did make sense. She and Tyler were supposed to see each other as siblings, even though they hadn't necessarily been raised to. Just then, the perfect example came to mind. "Wasn't Harry like your brother? Your big brother? Right from the beginning?"

"He still is," Floss answered matter-of-factly. "Me and Finn are seeing him next week."

"Well, Tyler is to me what Harry is to you."

"No, he's not," Ryan scoffed from the pool table. "You—"

"Butt out, Ryan, or I'll tell everyone." She didn't even have to specify what she was talking about because he fell silent straight away. She didn't know why he took Candi-Rose shopping sometimes and she didn't really care to find out but she knew it wasn't something he wanted everyone else to find out about. She smirked as Alex started grilling Ryan about his dirty secret, turning her attention back to Floss. "Me and Tyler are just friends, Floss. Always have been"—the next words got stuck in her throat but she forced them out anyway—"and always will be."

Despite still looking determined, perhaps staunch in the belief that Jyler was a real thing, Floss got up and left without another word, leaving Jody to her thoughts. Tyler still wasn't back yet. Was he off being a lad, bragging to his mates from school about how his date with 'hot' Hannah had gone? Or on the phone to the girl herself, telling her things he'd never say to her? Was Hannah on the way to becoming his girlfriend, the answer to Jody's Brandon? Was this how it was going to be from now on, the two of them with separate love lives they'd never bring up around each other, even though she had at least told him about Brandon?

Maybe she had to make him her brother, after all. Maybe it was just what was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I hate coming up with names for characters you only see once because then you end up at risk of creating a host of OCs with little to no purpose, but after writing the first scene in this chapter without naming any of Jody's friends, it just looked ridiculous. In the end, I went back to RyanMan and used some of the names from Jody's contact list; at least I can say most of them aren't OCs.**
> 
> **Also, a lot of you guys might be thinking why I don't stick to one story arc and finish it before starting another (as in the way I introduced Kingsley Gray ages ago but Jody hasn't properly met him yet) but everything resolving itself within a few chapters doesn't seem very realistic to me. How likely is it that a girl who's never met her dad would decide to track him down straight after running into him in a supermarket like one time? I know Jody's a pretty impulsive person and thinks with her heart when it comes to her family (deciding to steal to help Kingsley, deciding to lie to see her mum and Grant) but it didn't feel right for her to wind up on Gray's doorstep by chapter ten or even twenty, or even forgive Luke straight after the funeral. What do you think? Am I going too slowly?**


	20. Chapter 20

Jody squirmed in her bedsheets, clutching her abdomen as May-Li chastised her for her bout of overeating the previous evening. As it turned out, she'd been feeling queasy for a reason during her conversation with Floss and was now paying the price for it. It looked like she wouldn't be going to school, which was the only good thing to come out of the whole ordeal, but she also likely wouldn't be allowed to leave the house after school hours, the period of time she'd planned to go to Gray's house and get revenge on him. She groaned, turning away from May-Li as an uncomfortable sensation wreaked havoc on her insides, the muffled voices of the others travelling through the closed bedroom door and making their way to her ears. She closed her eyes in exasperation; everyone was gossiping about what could possibly be wrong with her, the chief theory being that she was faking to get a day off. They were stupid. Why would she suddenly want a day off for no reason?

No sooner had she mentally cursed the others than bile rose to her throat, and she forced herself to lift her head up, throwing up in the bag May-Li had brought up to her just in time to avoid destroying the carpet. She heaved, feeling May-Li comfortingly rubbing her back, before vomiting again so hard that she thought there was nothing left in her stomach but acid. Feeling totally empty, she unceremoniously dumped the now heavy bag on the floor and let her head drop back on the pillow, the rancid odour of her own sick and the sour taste in her mouth disgusting her. To her credit, May-Li didn't look outwardly appalled as she walked around the bed and picked the bag up, muttering something about getting a replacement. Unfortunately, her leaving the room meant that the others could freely walk in and harass Jody. Not surprisingly, that was what they did, starting with Ryan.

"Shouldn't have gorged on that ice cream like a pig," he taunted, the corners of his lips curving upwards. He was standing in the doorway, flanked by Finn and Joseph. "Although, you have to wonder if you're throwing up for another reason."

His meaning couldn't have been any clearer if he'd just straight out said it and if her head didn't feel like it weighed a tonne, she would've got up and throttled him for such an insinuation.

"What do you mean?" Finn asked, sounding confused. "Another reason?"

"Wait, you don't mean...?" Joseph trailed off questioningly, his eyes widening perceptibly as he regarded Jody. She stared back at him, unable to believe that he was actually considering it as a plausibility; he was supposed to be intelligent. Considering everything they'd been through during the kangaroo court, this felt like a total betrayal.

On the topic of betrayals, she saw Tyler join the crowd in her doorway and peer into the room over Ryan's shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

"Like crap," she replied, turning over on her belly so that she didn't have to see any of them. She was still annoyed that he hadn't told her anything about his date with Hannah and her patience was seriously running thin. It'd been three days since the date and if he hadn't told her by now, he was likely never going to.

"Get ready, Tyler, mate," Ryan said, "There might be some good news on the way... Ever wanted to be a godfather?"

That was it. She raised her head off the pillow, about to roll out of bed and give him a piece of her mind when she heard May-Li yell for Jay to wake up. The sound of hurried footfalls told her that at least two of the boys had retreated. She let her head drop again, turning on her back and smiling weakly at May-Li who placed an empty bag on her bedside.

"You probably won't need the bag because this lot'll be gone soon and you'll have the bathroom to yourself," May-Li stated, tipping her head towards the door. She turned to Tyler who was still standing in the doorway with concern written all over his face. "Has Jay got up yet?" He shook his head in response. Sighing, she left the room to presumably deal with Jay, leaving the pair of best friends alone together.

"Is"—he sighed, looking up to the ceiling—"what Ryan said, is it—"

He didn't even have the guts to finish the insulting question. She let out a shaky breath, feeling sick to the stomach again, though for a completely different reason. How could he think that of her? How could he think that she and Brandon were—

She stared at him, though he avoided looking at her, whispering, "I don't believe you."

.:. QK .:.

After a morning of sleeping in and an early afternoon of chilling out in front of the telly, Jody felt newly invigorated, so much so that she decided she was still going to pay Gray a visit as planned. As the others filed downstairs one after the other following a long day of school, she hung around in the kitchen with her loaded backpack, discreetly counting the number of eggs in the fridge. She'd already bought her own eggs over the weekend and hidden them in her room but some more couldn't hurt. Sour milk would've been a bonus but she hadn't had the time to prepare it and likely would've been caught by May-Li anyway.

"You're not actually going to do it?" Tyler asked, walking in through the door and stopping on the other side of the wooden table adjoining the breakfast bar. "Not today?"

"Err, yes I am," she responded flatly, surprised that he even dared show his face to her after what he'd asked her in the morning.

"In your condition?" She slammed the fridge door shut, ready to yell at him when he hastily corrected himself, "I mean, you threw up twice in the morning."

"So? I'm not some fragile pansy." She rolled her eyes at his over-the-top concern, carefully picking her bag up and swinging it over her shoulders so as not to break the precious cargo inside. "And it was literally hours ago, anyway."

He smiled somewhat uneasily. "I know, but..."

"But what?" she prompted disinterestedly, trying to think of a way to get out of the house.

Mike and May-Li would probably put up a fuss over her going out after being ill, much like Tyler currently was, but she'd somehow have to convince them to let her go without revealing her true intentions. Going on a walk with a backpack sounded dodgy even to her own ears but she didn't have any other ideas. Usually, she and Tyler would brainstorm an excuse together, like they were originally meant to anyway, but she wasn't about to let him tag along or get involved in any way after his recent  _acts_  towards her.

"Nothing," he finally answered, his eyes shining in... something. Something she didn't quite like the look of. "It's not like you'll be on your own anyway."

Ah. There it was. She'd been expecting it, to be honest, especially since he'd helped her plan the revenge in its inception. "I can do this on my own," she insisted, walking past him on the way out of the kitchen. "I can do it without you," she continued, knowing he was following her.

"Yeah, I know you can, but I helped you plan this," he said, stopping outside the office with her. "You can't just drop me."

Well, he was right about that. Dropping her feelings for him was turning out to be much harder than she ever thought it'd be. She'd been stupid to think that they'd magically disappear as soon as she started liking (dating) someone else. Whether he'd managed to drop his feelings for her remained to be seen.

"More like I suggested things and you nodded and agreed," she countered lightly, slightly stepping away from the door as Mike opened it. The corners of her lips involuntarily twitched at the affronted look on Tyler's face but she didn't let him see, looking to Mike. "Can I go out?"

Mike stared back at her in bewilderment. "Where could you possibly want to go after what happened this morning? Surely not the gym?"

"No, of course not," she assured, dismissively waving her hand at him. "I just want to go on a walk."

He seemed to notice her backpack just then, proceeding to scrutinise her through his glasses. "Oh, yeah? With a bag full of junk food?"

"It's not junk food!" Tyler interjected before she could even reply. She gave him a sidelong glance, not completely surprised by his intervention. "It's just two bottles of water. We're going to the park."

 _We._  So he'd managed to wrangle his way onto her trip, after all. After a bit more interrogation, which she let him handle since he was so keen an' all, the two of them were granted permission to leave the house. He winked at her on the way out of the porch and, despite the fact that she was irritated at him, her heart melted just a little towards him.

.:. QK .:.

As it turned out, Gray lived a few roads away from a local park and while Jody didn't frequent the park itself because it was more for little kids than teens, she often passed it on her bus route on the way to town. It was a miracle she hadn't seen him more than once. Then again, she had no idea how long he'd lived in Pottiswood; he could've moved here any time from years ago to mere days before she'd seen him in the supermarket. There was no way of knowing, not until she spoke to him which wasn't why she was visiting his home today.

Strolling through the said park and leading Tyler towards a huge tree, she took a dark purple bandana out of her pocket. While he leant against the tree and twiddled his thumbs, she proceeded to cover her nose and mouth with the bandana and tie it around the back of her head before pulling her hair up into a bun.

"Do you have a spare?" he asked, pushing himself off the tree and standing up straight. "I can control the 'fro but I need something for my face."

"You're the one who tagged along," she said, her voice muffled by her makeshift mask. She hadn't forgiven him completely. The entire walk to the park, she'd wondered how he could think she was so base. "You should've thought about it before."

He was seemingly undeterred by her hostility. "You got a large hanky or something?"

"I've got a tissue," she replied matter-of-factly, taking an unused, still folded tissue out of her pocket and waving it in front of him. She'd meant it as a joke but he took it from her, spreading it out and covering the lower half of his face with it.

"I'm sorry," he suddenly said after a beat, startling her. "I didn't mean to upset you this morning." Hmm, so he  _did_  know that his words had offended her, after all. "I thought that maybe you and Brandon..."

"Well, you thought wrong!" she exclaimed, pulling the hood of her thin jacket up and over her head. She squared her shoulders, sure that she resembled a street urchin but noted that he looked ridiculous holding a pocket tissue up against his face as a mask. "That might be the kind of the thing you do with Hannah but it's not something that me and Brandon do together!"

"What?!" he shouted, his eyes widening. "Me and Hannah?! That's gross!"

"Nice," she commented sarcastically, though she couldn't prevent the burgeoning sense of vindication she felt at his lowly opinion of his one-time date. Nevertheless, she tried not to appear too pleased. "I'm sure she'd be glad to hear what you really think of her."

"I meant that she's too young," he clarified, looking pointedly at her. "She's only fourteen!"

" _I'm_  only fourteen!" she retorted, turning away from a man who was staring at them. Two teenagers arguing while wearing masks and hoodies didn't look too good, and she didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to herself. She was, after all, intent on inflicting criminal damage pretty soon. "It didn't stop you from thinking it about me!"

" _I_  wouldn't touch a girl your age like that but I don't know if Brandon would, do I?" he questioned, throwing his arms out and dropping the tissue-mask.  _Your_  age? Who was he kidding? She was only six weeks younger than him... His gaze flickered to something over her shoulder, and he held the tissue back up against his face and put his hood on, continuing to explain himself, "That's something only you can answer. I don't know anything about him or your relationship."

"Well it's not really any of your business," she sneered, slowly walking away from the tree. She was sure he'd seen that same man staring at them over her shoulder, and if they didn't leave soon, they were likely going to get into trouble. She regarded him sadly as he walked alongside her, realising that this was the first time he'd brought her relationship up. In an argument. It wasn't right. "It's not like you're interested in anything to do with me, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"You never ask me about how my dates go, about how things are going with Brandon. It's like you don't care. Even Ryan's asked me about at least one date."

He raised an eyebrow at her, his voice harsh as he responded with: "Yeah, because Ryan cares about you so much."

"That's—That's not the point," she faltered, pulling at her sleeve. "You didn't even tell me about Hannah."

"Cos there's nothing to tell. It was  _one_  date and, honestly, I don't know if it's going to go anywhere."

"But that's the thing!" she countered in frustration, her voice escalating. His admission that it was going nowhere should've quelled her inappropriate jealousy but, for some reason, it didn't. Instead, she just felt even more irritated. "I told you about Brandon right from the beginning after turning him down! You went on an actual date but you didn't tell me, not even afterwards!"

"Calm down!" he urged, his eyes darting around the park as they approached the exit. She huffed in response, aware that people were probably staring at them but she didn't care; they were leaving anyway. "I just told you why I didn't tell you. What's wrong with you?"

"You!" she shouted, and he abruptly stopped in his tracks. He turned to her, his face, or rather, eyes, blank for the first time during their entire exchange. Her negative emotions deflated rapidly, almost in an instant; he seldom looked at her like that. "You never tell me anything anymore," she admitted softly, moving out of the way as a woman with a pushchair entered the park. This movement, of course, meant that she was now standing closer to him than she had in a long time, perhaps since she'd started seeing Brandon. Blood rushed to her cheeks at their proximity and she hated herself for it; she rarely felt anything when she stood this close to her actual boyfriend. "It hurts."

"It hurts, does it?" he asked, his voice devoid of any emotion. He seemed not to realise what kind of effect he had on her, and because his face was partially concealed, she couldn't tell if she had any effect on him. A weak part of her hoped she did, despite everything. "Well, that's how I feel all the time. When you push me away, when you hide things from me. You know, I'm not stupid; I know that you've known about your dad longer than you've let on. I also know that I only found out because I went to the cemetery with you. You were  _never_  going to tell me yourself."

"I—" she started but cut herself off, knowing she had no response to that. He was right; she'd never once intended to tell him. Something else was bothering her, though. He'd never been a vindictive person and, yet, it sounded like the real reason he hadn't told her about Hannah was that he wanted to punish her for keeping things from him. "So you didn't tell me because you wanted to hurt me back?"

He sighed audibly. "No," he replied firmly, momentarily looking to the skies as if for help. "The date happened before I found out about your dad, anyway. I didn't tell you because it wasn't important to me." So Hannah wasn't important? "But if something as important as my dad showing up happened, you'd be the first person to know about it." She felt a pang of guilt. Even after he'd found out about Gray, she hadn't told him anything else about the whole ordeal, like how she'd seen Gray in the supermarket  _months_  ago and had initially tried looking for him. She had no excuse for not sharing it with him. None at all. "Besides, you said yourself that you and Brandon aren't my business, so why are me and Hannah yours?"

She swallowed deeply, hurt even though she had no right to be. Now that she thought about it, she would've been annoyed as well if he'd borne down on her for not telling him about one inconsequential date. As she mulled things over, another thought occurred to her: maybe he hadn't wanted to tell her about the date because he knew she would be jealous.

After a short pause, she managed to find her voice. "Let's just go." She shoved her hands into her pockets, aware that they were being stared at again. "I've got more important things to do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This one is all over the place. I was as conflicted as Jody while writing this one, lol.**


	21. Chapter 21

Strolling through the garden, Jody sighed as she watched the other residents enjoy themselves in the sun, envying their ability to frolic about without a care in the world. She wasn't self-centred enough to believe that she was the only care kid with issues but she doubted any of the others had ever gone through what she'd been going through as of late: knowing that her father had left her but was now searching for her, having to compete with her brother's girlfriend for said brother's attention, and dealing with the ever-growing chasm between her and her best friend. Since she was still adamant that she wouldn't see Luke again without him informing his girlfriend about her existence first, something she knew he hadn't done yet because Simon hadn't contacted her about him wanting to see her again, she'd been reduced to waiting around like some damsel in distress for him to man up, a feat that felt like it was going to take forever.

Her father, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. Egging his house with Tyler had perhaps been more trouble than it was worth. To her surprise, the thrill and satisfaction at avenging herself and the other Jacksons had been short-lived; she'd rapidly sobered up upon seeing grainy CCTV images of herself and Tyler vandalising Gray's small terrace house in the local news. Tyler had insisted that it didn't matter because they'd been wearing conspicuous enough clothing and, of course, their faces had been covered, but that wasn't even the point; she had committed a crime, or at the very least something resembling a crime, and was therefore no better than the Jacksons. While this wasn't her first crime, she had acted with the intent to hurt her victim(s) this time around, exactly like the Jacksons had when they'd assaulted their then neighbours. The realisation made her feel dirty and dishonest. A few months ago, she'd told Mike that she was reverting to her birth name to avoid prison but if someone caught wind of what she'd done, both she and Tyler would likely end up in an STC just as Luke had (if not Secure). It was sort of ironic, actually, how she'd ended up acting against the man whose name she carried for (in part) the family whose name she'd dropped. No matter how much Tyler tried to convince her otherwise, the bad Jackson blood in her veins still had a firm grip on her.

Speaking of Tyler, their friendship was currently at an all-time low. Where he'd already had little time for her between his job and other responsibilities, he now had even less because he used up nearly all of his spare time hanging out with other people, either the other residents or his school friends. Anyone who wasn't her, basically. The situation was so dire that she didn't even know if he'd still be up for continuing their movie marathon this weekend. She supposed some of what was happening between them was her fault; she'd shut him out more than once and while she'd given him the personal card she'd made with her own two hands, she hadn't verbally acknowledged his birthday despite him spending the said day on a revenge mission with her. Sure, she hadn't asked him to come along—she'd actually tried to dissuade him—but that didn't change the fact that he'd still been devoted enough to risk going to Secure/STC for her. She shook her head in self-disappointment; she made his accompanying her sound so romantic in her head when, in reality, he'd merely been being a good friend to her. Nearly three weeks of being someone else's girlfriend and she was still an idiot who fancied her best friend. How much more time would she have to give it before she was able to look upon Tyler in a purely platonic or even familial light?

"Jody!"

She stopped mid-stroll, spinning around to see Alex, Finn and Ryan waving her over. "What?!" she called back, staying rooted to her spot and warily eying the latter; she wasn't up for more torment at his hands. They were all already under house arrest because some idiot had tampered with something in the office but no one had owned up and, given his history, she was sure as hell that it'd been him.

Finn smiled at her, obviously unaware of her discomfort. "Come play with us! We need four players!"

She looked around the garden to see that Tyler wasn't around. It wasn't like she never played football without him—she was far more into it than he was and had more time on her hands than he had—but the fact that he was holed up in his room rather than being out here like nearly everyone else just proved to her that he wasn't interested in spending time with her or even being around her. With that in mind, she ran up to the boys and tackled the ball off Ryan. As disheartening as it was, she had to accept that she and Tyler were inevitably drifting apart.

.:. QK .:.

Saturday rolled around quicker than expected and, to Jody's relief, relations between her and Tyler hadn't deteriorated enough for him to make an excuse to back out of their marathon. Maybe it was because there had been only four films left and so it would've been a shame to abandon it at such a point but she appreciated him sticking to it all the same. That had been her initial feeling, anyway; as the film progressed, she'd quickly found that there was a marked distance between the pair of them that hadn't been there before, even when she'd first started seeing Brandon (which when they'd started the marathon). It wasn't quite as bad as the time they'd nearly stopped talking altogether right after the supermarket incident but that painful awkwardness and deafening silence were there all the same. Throughout the film, they'd said very little to each other, hadn't laughed as hard together during the funny bits, and, most importantly, he'd got himself his own bowl of popcorn. His  _own_  bowl. They hadn't not shared a bowl since that time they'd fallen out over Sophie from the skate park. He'd even left a gap between the two of them on the sofa, one big enough for Taz to fit in, and as soon as the film had finished, he'd made his excuses and left.

Thirty minutes later, she was still sitting there like a complete melon, like she had nothing better to do. Admittedly, she didn't. She'd already been to the gym earlier in the day and had done some of her homework right before the film but didn't feel up to finishing it. Oh well, there was always tomorrow. She lazed about on the sofa, her thoughts involuntarily turning to Gray and Luke when she heard the door to the hallway leading to Chloe and Candi-Rose's room open. Turning her head and peering over the back of the sofa, she saw Candi-Rose sauntering in, a wide smile plastered on her face.

"Hi!" she greeted cheerfully, skipping over to the sofa. Jody smiled weakly in response, her mind still swirling with thoughts of her family and her  _crime_. "How are you? I haven't seen you all day."

"I went down to the gym after breakfast"—Candi-Rose's eyes literally lit up—"and was busy doing my homework when I got back," she answered, tipping her head to the side. "Well, half of it... How are you?"

"Good," Candi-Rose replied, sitting down next to her. Jody shifted in her seat, knowing what was coming next. "How are things going with Brandon? Going on another date anytime soon?"

"Good," Jody copied, pressing her lips together. She and Brandon hadn't actually been on a date in two weeks. Was that out of the ordinary? Her friends from school, Chris and April, didn't go on dates too often but, then again, they saw each other at school every single weekday. Jody herself saw Brandon about four times a week. It seemed like enough. What was the need for dates? "He hasn't asked me out on another one yet."

Candi-Rose's eyes widened. "You're waiting for him to make another move?!" she shrieked, making Jody inch away from her a little. "Oh, Jody...!"

"What?" Jody asked, flustered. Candi-Rose looked stricken as if some sort of calamity had befallen her. She didn't understand what was wrong.

"He's asked you out four times, right?" Candi-Rose questioned, fixing Jody with the most serious look she'd ever received from the girl. She merely nodded, totally out of her depth. "And you let him know that you had a good time?" She slowly nodded again. "He's waiting for  _you_  to make a move now."

"He is...?" she asked unsurely. "He doesn't really give off that vibe."

"Trust me, he is," Candi-Rose responded confidently. "You've  _got_  to ask him on a date."

Jody squinted at the younger girl, confused. Frankly, she was happy just hanging out with Brandon at the gym. Dates were nice and everything but she couldn't be bothered to dress up and look pretty all the time. She just liked being able to call someone her boyfriend, and that was something she could do that within the four walls of the gym. "But why? We're already boyfriend and girlfriend."

Candi-Rose looked at her as if she was a lost cause. "Because even though you're his girlfriend, you've got to let him know that you're still into him. Otherwise, the two of you will break up before you know it." Break up? She'd only been Brandon's girlfriend for three weeks! They couldn't break up! "Relationships need work."

 _Work_. She nearly groaned. She'd never been good at working on anything, almost always abandoning things halfway through and procrastinating until the very last minute on tasks she absolutely had to complete such as chores and homework. Still, she'd brought this upon herself; she'd decided to continue dating Brandon because it made her feel grown-up and now she'd have to pay the price by working at her relationship like an actual grown-up.

"Yeah, alright," she relented, figuring that a boyfriend was worth the work. "I'll ask him out."

"Yay!" Candi-Rose squealed in a way that only she could, pulling Jody into an unexpected hug. As Jody tried not to be smothered to death, she wondered where to take Brandon.

.:. QK .:.

In the end, after little thought and a few Google searches, Jody texted Brandon to ask him out to a random cafe. Well, it would've been a random cafe, if not for the fact that it was pretty close to Gray's house and required them to walk past the said house to actually get there. The strong need to see how much lasting damage her egg-throwing had caused had been there since the day she'd done it and now she finally had an excuse to go and do it. Despite the regret she felt at committing a crime, she held no actual remorse towards the victim himself; he'd deserved what he'd got and so much more, though not through further crime by her hand.

After receiving a positive reply from her boyfriend, Jody headed upstairs to turn in for the night. Alex had been on dinner duty this evening and had done a pretty good job but it was Charlie's turn next and  _everyone_  knew what to expect. Soon enough the day would come when she, Tyler and Ryan would have to share dinner duty with the others as the next three eldest. Ryan had made a good breakfast for them all that one time, and Tyler had made her some decent stuff throughout her entire ban on using kitchen appliances, but she was totally hopeless in the kitchen. It was why she rarely had an English breakfast; she couldn't fry anything without burning it. She just knew she'd be the next Charlie, but worse.

She walked into her room, berating herself for her negativity. There was a  _small_  chance she'd be a halfway decent cook by the time Mike and May-Li added dinner to her list of chores. Misjudging her own strength, she took her phone out of her jeans pocket and chucked it on the floor, narrowly missing her intended target: her bed. She frowned, scurrying over to the side of the bed closest to the wall and picking her phone up. Relieved to see that it hadn't hit the wall or bedside and thus was undamaged, she was about to get up off the floor when she heard slightly muffled voices through the wall.

"It's not going to happen!" shouted Bird, shocking the living daylights out of her. In the four months she'd been next door to him and his brother, she'd never once heard him raise his voice. Not that he ever raised his voice outside his room either; he was a quiet boy who mostly minded his own business, not at all like his insufferable and complacent brother.

"How do you know that?!" Jay yelled in return, his voice louder because his bed was next to the shared wall between their rooms. "They might be at home looking for us right now!"

Oh. So this was family stuff. None of her business then... but if she could hear them then so could Ryan, and Ryan hearing personal stuff didn't bode well for anyone. Was she obliged to warn the boys? What if they misunderstood her and thought she was the one eavesdropping instead? She didn't even know if Ryan was in his room.

"I really didn't want to say this but you've left me no choice: if they wanted us, don't you think they would've called the social services by now?! That's what you do when you know your child's in care and you want to get back into contact!"

Having heard enough, Jody pushed herself away from the wall—she'd somehow ended up with her right ear pressed up against it—and fell back on her bed, Bird's statement replaying itself in her head over and over. He was right; all a man or woman searching for their child in care had to do was pick up the phone and call social services. She couldn't believe that that simple fact had eluded her all these weeks.

If Gray was genuinely searching for her, why hadn't he picked up the phone yet? He had to know that she was in care... didn't he? Even if he didn't know that she was put in care as an eight-year-old, he'd have to think that she was in care after her mother's death. Then again, maybe he didn't? She doubted that he knew her gran was dead—even she hadn't been told until after the funeral because her bitter mother hadn't invited her to it—and that the brother who should've been capable of taking care of her was in prison. But still... he should've called to eliminate the possibility of her being in care. Since she was a Gray once more, it wasn't even as if he'd have had difficulty tracking her down due to her childhood name change.

Either he was too stupid for the possibility of her being in care to occur to him, a likely prospect given that him calling the social hadn't crossed  _her_  mind, or his desire to find her and her brothers had been a fleeting one brought on by... fond (?) memories of her mother? She honestly didn't know which was worse.

.:. QK .:.

The next day, Jody walked past Gray's house on her way to the coffee shop as intended. As she made idle chit-chat with Brandon, she openly stared at the house from the other side of the road, noting the damage to the windscreen of the car parked in front of it. She bit back a smile, hoping that the car belonged to Gray's partner—she could still hear the bitch screeching about how she'd assaulted her precious snotty son. She made a 'hmm' noise in either agreement or response to something Brandon said, spotting the front door of the house open. It took everything in her to keep walking but she did, discreetly peering back over her shoulder to see Gray and a teenage girl step out of the house, laughing together.

All of a sudden, she saw red. Gray had another daughter? She had a half sister? One he'd stuck around for? When he already had two children living with him, one of each, was it any wonder that he wasn't interested in locating her and her brothers? After all, he already had his perfect family right there. She tore her gaze away from the happy pair, her lips quivering.  _No._  She wouldn't cry. She couldn't mourn the loss of a father she'd never had; he'd never been anything more than a sperm donor to her.

"Jody?"

"Yeah?" she breathed, willing her eyes to remain dry. "Sorry, did you ask me something?"

"Not really," he responded, frowning. "I just noticed you looked a little troubled."

"Nah, I'm fine," she assured him, forcing herself to smile. "Err, the cafe's on the next road over."

He nodded, his hand accidentally brushing hers. At least she hoped it was accidental. Usually, she'd stick her hands into her pockets, a classic way of ensuring he wouldn't try anything, but it'd simply been too warm in the morning to wear a jacket. Instead, she sort of awkwardly clasped her incredibly sweaty hands together, and increased her pace a little. She knew she couldn't avoid hand-holding forever, especially if she was still with Brandon by the time she turned sixteen, but it was too soon yet. She shivered at the thought of kissing and... the  _deed_  which would be expected of her once she hit the age of consent. She didn't think she'd ever be ready for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I just realised something: Ryan is meant to be older than Jody and Tyler, and the same age as Charlie and probably Alex. I guess I could go back and fix it but I don't really fancy forking through twenty-eight damn chapters right now. Maybe after I complete the story. All in all, it shouldn't really affect the story either way.**
> 
> **While writing this, I also realised that Jody and Brandon probably weren't boyfriend and girlfriend but were just dating. I got my wires crossed because Jay referred to Brandon as Jody's boyfriend in one episode. If they were already boyfriend and girlfriend then what did Jody and the girls mean by Brandon 'getting serious'? Boyfriend/girlfriend is already serious, no? And surely, if they were in a relationship, she wouldn't have spoken about finishing things with him so easily (or maybe she would've?), and she wouldn't have asked Tyler to kiss her before she even had the chance to finish with Brandon? I mean, that's cheating!**
> 
> **Damn, I've really hit the wall with this one. If they were merely dating, she would've been using him to a lesser extent, but becoming his girlfriend when she still fancies Tyler makes her look so bitchy. Ugh! Breaking up with him just because Tyler finally admits to his feelings is going to be even worse! I don't know, maybe I'm looking at this differently as an adult; maybe teens refer to the people they're casually dating as boyfriend/girlfriend. Either way, I probably can't fix this story without making major changes to some of the chapters, so it's going to have to stay how it is. 🙁**


	22. Chapter 22

One lazy July morning, Jody sauntered downstairs long after everyone else had already had breakfast, a positive spring in her step. She only had one more week of school to go before the summer holidays commenced, and the latest instalment in the film series she'd done a movie marathon with Tyler for had finally come out. All in all, things were looking up, especially after her recent disheartening realisation that Luke still hadn't plucked up the courage to tell Millie about her.

"Jody!" Mike called, just as she passed the office. She quickly walked backwards, going back into his line of sight.

"Yeah?" she prompted, leaning into the office doorway as he approached her with a brown, bulky envelope.

"This is for you," he said, handing her the envelope. She took it from him, clocking on straight away that there was money inside, specifically coins. What was going on here? Her birthday was still two weeks away, and it wasn't like Mike to give them birthday money in an envelope, especially one with their full names and address on it. "Not from me."

She nodded and muttered a 'thanks', shoving the envelope in the left pocket of her dressing gown. If she were delusional, she would've thought that it was an early birthday present from Kingsley but the handwriting on the envelope definitely wasn't his messy scrawl and he was the one always asking her to help him out financially, not the other way around. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to entertain the idea of Luke having sent the money to make it up to her for taking so long (over a month) to fess up to Millie but she doubted her brother's girlfriend loosened her leash on him enough for him to even go to a postbox on his own.

Walking into the kitchen, she found Tyler hanging around in front of the toaster, seeming like he'd had a lie in as well. She wouldn't know. They didn't come down to breakfast together that often anymore, not even on school mornings; she tended to go downstairs on her own whereas he tagged along with one of the boys he shared a hallway with, usually Alex. It was another sad sign of the distance between them but she'd gradually learnt to accept it, no matter how much it hurt her. Besides, they were still going to that movie together. At least, she hoped they were.

"Morning," she greeted quietly, perching on one of the seats at the breakfast bar.

"Morning," he replied tiredly, yawning. She raised an eyebrow. What had he been doing last night? As if he could read her mind, he explained: "I was up all night with the night care worker, getting my passport renewed."

"Why?" she asked, laughing under her breath. They never went anywhere that required a passport. The council budget did not allow for holidays abroad. She'd never even been to a country that wasn't England.

"ID for the movies," he answered before regarding her strangely. "You are still going with me?"

"Yeah, of course," she responded, relieved that he'd brought it up first. Since he was done with the toaster, she hopped off her stool and took his place. "But you'll have to wait until I turn fifteen. Anyway, I thought we could just use a bus pass or something."

He sat down at the breakfast bar, sniggering. "Yeah, that's what Bill thought as well before they refused to sell him a ticket and chucked him out after he started an argument with them. Let's just say, his date never went out with him again." Oh yeah. She'd heard the playground gossip regarding that 'break-up'.

"I don't even have a passport, though," she said, frowning. She was the one who should've been up all night; she still looked twelve at times whereas he'd always appeared to be older than he actually was. If anyone was going to have to provide ID, it was her. "Mum never took us anywhere." The closest she'd got to a holiday was the blatant lie Denise had told Grant about their cultural trip to Venice.

She needed a passport.

.:. QK .:.

The next day, Jody went straight to the office, determined to get herself a passport. After Tyler had alerted her to the need of one yesterday, she'd asked Mike to apply for one for her and he'd told her to come back today because he needed to make a few phone calls first to obtain her mother's passport number and birth certificate. She hoped Luke wasn't one of the people he'd had to contact because there was a pretty good chance Millie would've answered his phone and found out all about her, maybe ruining her relationship with him forever. Peering through the office door's window, she saw May-Li sitting at her desk, talking on the phone. Mike was nowhere to be seen but May-Li saw her and held up a finger as if to say 'one sec'. Nodding, she sat down on the chair in between the office window and the piano.

"Oh, please Floss!" Candi-Rose begged, following a clearly unamused Floss out of the lounge and into the lobby. "I'd be great! You know I would!"

"No, you don't look old enough," Floss replied stubbornly before she did a double take at Jody, her eyes lighting up in what appeared to be approval. "Jody!" she exclaimed, walking up to her with an unnaturally wide smile on her face. A deflated Candi-Rose trailed along like a kicked puppy. "Will you be my bride?"

Jody blinked rapidly, thoroughly taken aback by the weird request. "Umm, sorry, Floss," she said, grimacing. "I don't swing that way... and I'm pretty sure it'd be incest." Floss was, after all, kind of an annoying, bratty little sister.

"I wasn't proposing to you!" Floss retorted, crossing her arms. "I need someone to pose as a bride for my art project."

She exhaled shortly through her nose, amused. "Not this again. You made Carmen stand in the same spot for ages the last time."

"Come on, give me a chance, Floss!" Candi-Rose pleaded, "I've always wanted to dress up as a bride!"

"That was before I had a phone," Floss responded, totally ignoring Candi-Rose. "I'll just take a couple of photos and then you can be on your way. It's called painting by reference."

"Yeah, well, I'm busy," Jody said truthfully, though she wouldn't do it even if she wasn't. She leaned over to look through the office window, discovering that May-Li was still in the middle of her important phone call.

"Busy sitting down?" Floss asked dryly. "Well, I'll guess I can give you a few more minutes. I'll need to go and find Tyler anyway, cos you need a bridegroom."

Jody rolled her eyes, having expected something like this. Floss never missed an opportunity to push the Jyler agenda. "And now I'm  _definitely_  not doing it."

"Brandon's her boyfriend!" Candi-Rose pointed out, and Jody just pinched the bridge of her nose, waiting for the screeching to begin. This was only going to the beginning of the fifth shipping battle this week of a very long war.

Surprisingly, Floss didn't rise to the bait. "Don't be bitter," she told Candi-Rose. "You can do her hair and make-up." Candi-Rose proceeded to squeal, her desire to be the bride seemingly forgotten, and Jody's eyes darted between the two girls and the office. She was trapped, and her pink-loving housemate looked just about ready to drag her to her room for a full makeover.

"Why can't Charlie and Alex do it?" she questioned genuinely. She was sure that Alex would be more than happy to pose as Charlie's bridegroom. "They're the oldest."

"They're both out mowing random people's lawns," Candi-Rose answered, turning to Floss in excitement. "We should get Brandon over here to pose with her. A  _real_  couple would be way better than a pretend one!"

Before Jody could object to her boyfriend being exploited for a Year Six art project, May-Li yanked open the office door and popped her head out of the room. "Jody? You here about yesterday?"

"Yeah," Jody instantly replied, grateful for the interruption. As May-Li went back into the office, Jody stood up and gave Floss an apologetic smile. "You're going to have to let Candi be the bride after all."

Floss groaned and Candi-Rose grinned before Jody went into the office and shut the door on the both of them. May-Li looked up at her from her chair, shuffling a few papers about her desk. Apparently, because she was on the smaller side, her baby bump was more prominent than it would be on other women in the same stage of pregnancy. "Okay, so, Mike filled out the online application yesterday and all I've got to do now is get your documents together and send them to the passport office." Her surprise must've shown on her face because May-Li suddenly chuckled. "What's got you so shocked?"

Jody laughed, shaking her head. "Nothing, only I didn't expect you guys to get it done so quickly. I thought it'd take ages."

"Oh, thanks for that(!)" May-Li responded as she got up and opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet. Jody hadn't meant to imply that the care workers were slow at their work, even though they actually were at times. Things used to run much faster back at Elm Tree House when they'd had three care workers (or rather two care workers and one care work assistant). It was a shame that Melanie, Tracy's replacement, hadn't lasted long. For some reason, Mike and Gina never replaced her. "The actual passport will take a few weeks to get here," May-Li continued, taking out a file Jody had never seen before and putting it on the desk. "It's a little more complicated than your usual application because you're in care."

"Typical," Jody commented, inching closer to the desk as May-Li looked inside the file.

The file was full of thin, pink pieces of paper with official, important-looking emblems on them. May-Li took one of the sheets out and placed it on her desk before closing the file and putting it away. Leaning over the desk, Jody studied the piece of paper she now realised was her birth certificate, skimming over her date and place of birth, full name and sex but stopping short when her gaze fell upon the next section. Her mind drew a blank, and her mouth became dry. This couldn't be right.

The section entitled ' **FATHER** ' was blank.

.:. QK .:.

Her head was still spinning when she got back from the nearest postbox; May-Li had asked her to post the envelope full of documents required for her to obtain her passport. Feeling utterly numb, she dragged herself to the lounge only to find Floss taking photos of Tyler and Candi-Rose dressed up as a bridegroom and bride. Normally, she wouldn't have batted an eyelid at the spectacle but seeing Tyler with another girl today, even if it was just Candi-Rose, made her see red. In a fit of jealousy, she stomped towards Floss and snatched her phone.

"Oi!" Floss exclaimed, lunging at Jody. "What did you do that for?!"

Jody licked her lips, searching for something to say as she reluctantly returned Floss's phone to her. She couldn't outright say that she was in a horrible mood because of what she'd just discovered but she couldn't remain silent either. They'd think she was mad! "Don't you think Candi-Rose would look better with Ryan?" she asked weakly, only realising afterwards how disastrous that sounded. "Or Bird?"

"Not really," Floss answered, flicking through her photo gallery. "Bird looks too young, and Ryan would make it look like he's divorcing her, not marrying her." She suddenly stopped what she was doing and looked up from her phone, her eyes flitting towards Candi-Rose. "You still look too young here."

"It'll be fine, just put some wrinkles on her when you get round to painting us," Tyler piped up. Despite her anger, Jody had to refrain from smiling at his unhelpful comment as Candi-Rose let out a loud 'eww'.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Floss glare at Tyler. "I want to leave school as the best artist of my year, not some amateur!" She turned to Jody. "Either I wait for Charlie and Alex to come back or you take Candi-Rose's place."

Surprising even herself, Jody agreed, and within ten minutes, she was wearing one of Candi-Rose's dresses, a veil, and makeup. It was a little awkward posing as Tyler's bride given the state of their friendship as of late, and she was sure she looked downright ridiculous all dolled up and hanging off his arm, but the whole thing was a good distraction from thoughts of her family, at least for a while. Even the dress wasn't as horrendous as she thought it'd be; it was pretty tame for Candi-Rose. Unfortunately, the photo shoot was over far too soon and Jody 'Gray' was forced to face the troubling questions regarding her paternity again.

Back when she'd first seen her birth certificate, she'd thought the worst: that Gray's details weren't on it because she simply wasn't his daughter, and that she'd been living a lie her entire life. However, that theory just didn't hold any stock; if Gray had thought she wasn't his daughter right from the beginning, he wouldn't have stuck around for that first year and a half. Besides, paternity tests had definitely existed back in 2003. The alternative, that Gray was her father but opted not to be named her father, made even less sense. Everyone else on the planet was either given their mother's last name regardless of whether their father was listed on the birth certificate or not, or their father's last name as well as having his details on their birth certificate. By all logical reasoning, it would've made more sense for her to have been Jody Jackson right from the start.

Was Gray even on her brothers' birth certificates? Was he not on hers so that he wouldn't have to be legally responsible for her? Or because he'd never been married to her mother? Was he just the type of guy who wasn't on any of his kids' birth certificates, even those of Benji and his sister? How was she even supposed to determine that?

It just didn't make sense.

.:. QK .:.

"You know Floss only asked you to be the bride because of...?"

She tiredly peered up at him from her phone, letting out a quiet laugh. She supposed he was right. It wasn't like she looked significantly older than Candi-Rose; her youthful appearance was the reason she desperately needed ID in the first place. Besides, how old had Floss seriously expected a couple of care kids to look?

"Yeah, I guess," she muttered, pressing the power button on her phone and watching the screen go black. She leaned back against the sofa as he sat down next to her, leaving that Taz sized gap she'd now grown accustomed to between them.

"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked curiously. "You seemed a little angry when you took Floss' phone and then you practically ran off after she was done taking photos."

"I saw my birth certificate today, for the first time," she admitted, certain that everyone else was either outside or upstairs. "My dad wasn't on it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Really? How did you know his name then?" She blinked rapidly, startled by his words. "I thought your mum never said it be—"

"Because she hated him," she finished, realising he was right. She'd asked for her 'daddy's' name a couple of times as a child but Denise had always snapped at her in response, and, of course, she'd never dared to ask again after Kingsley's feral outburst over her naive girlhood drawing. "So did Kingsley..."

How  _did_  she know? She couldn't remember being told by anyone, not even by Luke who'd hated Gray the least and had always just referred to him as 'Dad'.

"Did you know that it was his name for sure or...?"

She glared at him. What was he implying? That she'd invented her father's name during a bout of madness... or sadness? "Someone must've told me; I couldn't have just guessed it. I already knew  _before_  the woman at the supermarket called out his name."

He just looked confused. "What woman and what supermarket?"

Oh no. She bit her lip, remembering that she'd never told him about the supermarket run-in with Gray. How could she forget? After all, it was one of the many reasons there was an emotional distance between them now. "Err, I saw him at the local supermarket when I went shopping with Charlie... and I knocked his son over. The boy's mum called him over because the security guard wouldn't kick me out."

To his credit, he didn't look angry upon hearing what she'd hidden from him for months. Instead, he simply asked, "His son?"

"He's got a daughter as well," she said sadly, wrinkling her nose. "Another one, I mean. With that woman he left us for."

"You should've told me."

Looking down at her hands, she sighed. What difference would it have made? Gray still would've been off enjoying his life with his replacement family and she still would've been a grisly, emotionally damaged care kid. She swallowed deeply, making eye contact with him once more. "It doesn't matter anyway. He was never really my dad, not in the way he was Luke's and Kingsley's. And if he really wanted to find me, he would've called social services by now." She inhaled deeply, trying to quell the sinking feeling in her chest. "My only blood family is Luke."

Empty words. She'd already given up on Gray twice before but he'd managed to worm his way back into her mind without even trying each time and she was sure he would again, whether she liked it or not. As for Luke, at the rate things were currently progressing, he'd have married Millie and had five kids with her before telling her that he had a little sister. The money she'd briefly hoped was from him had turned out to be her share of proceeds from a joint venture with her school friends that she'd forgotten about.

Her family were such let-downs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Jody seeing her birth certificate for the first time at nearly fifteen years old might seem contrived but I legit saw mine for the first time (that I can remember) at nineteen years of age! I'd simply never needed it before that.**


	23. Chapter 23

Jody wasn't naive. Even if the others weren't totally awful at being discreet, she would've been able to discern what was going on right under her nose due to the simple fact that everyone was cooped up at home instead of enjoying the second week of their summer holidays outside. As usual, their attempts at distracting her were feeble and almost pitiable but she humoured them nonetheless, keeping to her room for the better part of the morning. She had plenty to keep her occupied anyway; both of her brothers had sent her birthday cards, her friends had all Snapped her birthday wishes, and Brandon had sent her a short but sweet birthday text. She sat on her bed, texting Rick about her passport which still hadn't arrived yet when there was a knock on the door.

"I'm decent!" she called, continuing to text her former housemate.

Rick reckoned that her passport would get to her within a few days because it wasn't supposed to take longer than three weeks but she worried; she'd applied as a care kid whereas he'd got his like a normal kid  _before_  being put in care. She guessed he was right in telling her to be patient, but they both knew that she was rubbish at waiting.

After a few seconds, the door swung open to reveal Tyler hanging around in the doorway. "You know they're expecting you to be surprised?" he asked knowingly. "You should probably at least pretend to be."

"Where's the fun in that?" she countered, raising an eyebrow. Realising that he wouldn't come in unless she gave him the express permission to do so, she wordlessly beckoned him over. "Was that what you were doing when we threw you a party for your thirteenth?"

"Kinda," he admitted, sitting down on the chair in front of her desk even though she'd clearly gestured to her bed. "Couldn't spoil the fun, could I?"

"Suppose not," she said, remembering how Mo had got together with his one-week girlfriend during that party. She wondered how he was doing these days, and if he'd managed to find a girlfriend who believed in aliens like his first so obviously hadn't. "Luke sent me a card. I'm surprised he managed to do it without his girlfriend finding out."

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "He  _still_  hasn't told her?"

"Nope," she answered, pressing her lips together. "You know, I really want to believe that he wants a good relationship with me but his _other_  relationship seems to be way more important to him." She wrinkled her nose in displeasure. "I mean, shouldn't blood come before that other stuff?"

He shrugged. "I don't know... would you pick him over B—err, that other stuff?"

She decided to ignore his obvious slip-up; he always went out of his way to avoid speaking her boyfriend's name, as if it was a curse or something. "If he was the old Luke, then yeah, I would."

But he wasn't the old Luke, was he? He was a stranger who bore her brother's name and face but dressed, talked, and behaved entirely like someone else. Was that just what happened when a person went off to uni? Did three years of being a grown-up change someone to the point of no return? Would she and Tyler come out of uni in six years, accustomed to dressing sensibly (boringly) twenty-four seven and speaking in high vocab? She couldn't imagine it.

"Are you okay?"

She snapped out of her grim thoughts. Oh, why was she depressing herself? It was her birthday, not Luke's. However, in spite of everything, she just couldn't help herself. It hadn't escaped her notice that Luke had appeared to be normal that time he'd visited Ashdene Ridge shortly after their mother's funeral, meaning his drastic change had happened between then and the last time she'd seen him. It seemed all too easy to point the finger at Millie as the reason behind his change but Luke had told her himself that he'd started dating said woman at the beginning of his third year of uni, not a few months ago. Whatever the reason was, it had to be a good one; he tended to stick to one way of doing everything, being as reluctant to change as she was. At least, the Luke she knew had been.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she hastily replied, subtly (she hoped) avoiding Tyler's gaze.

She couldn't lie to him, of course, but after getting him involved in the Gray debacle, she wasn't up for him either approving of or dissuading her from the stupid plan brewing in her mind. The former would only spur her on in the belief that she was doing the right thing and the latter would perhaps prevent her from ever becoming close to her brother again. To be frank, she should've known better by now than to go out looking for answers which would only cause her pain but, as always, it was her heart versus her head and it looked like the heart was going to win out by a mile.

.:. QK .:.

Funnily enough, Jody hadn't had to pretend to be surprised upon entering the lounge; she'd been genuinely stunned by both the amount of effort the others had put into throwing a karaoke party for her and the fact that some of her school friends were present. Knowing that he'd had a big hand in arranging the party, she'd smiled up at Tyler who'd entered the lounge behind her before going over to her mates and greeting them. For an entire glorious hour, the party had run smoothly with everyone in attendance being forced to sing at least once by someone or the other, including Ryan who looked like he wasn't plotting someone's downfall for once in his life. Jody herself had been dragged over to the karaoke stand twice but had accepted her fate with little resistance out of respect for the people who'd worked hard to make this party happen.

As Mike subjected both household members and guests alike to his tone-deaf singing, Jody stood off to the side with her friends, listening to them discuss what they'd done for the summer holidays so far as well as what was yet to come. For the sake of being good-natured, she tried to ignore the dull ache in her stomach when they talked about holidays abroad and such but failed miserably when her turn to share her holiday plans came round.

"Only Mike and May-Li know, I guess," she lied, the barely hampered jealousy she felt at her friends' normal lives threatening to bubble to the surface. "As for personal plans, it's not like my brother's going to take me anywhere or even come down for a visit."

She didn't talk to her friends about her personal life very often because they, through no fault of their own, would have a hard time understanding what it was like for her not to see her blood family at home every single day. However, the Luke and Millie problem was one aspect she had informed them of, simply because she'd thought they'd have some sort of advice to offer her. Unfortunately, they hadn't been much help, telling her that she couldn't exactly force Luke to fess up to Millie.

"I heard this in a Bollywood movie once: 'a son is a son till wife but a daughter is a daughter till life'," Aliyah said unhelpfully, continuing the discouraging rhetoric.

"Shouldn't it be till death... or for life?" Beth asked, having missed the whole point.

Aliyah shrugged at her before looking to Jody. "I know that he's your brother, not your son, but the same sort of thing might apply. I mean, my uncle says that his daughter-in-law controls his son to the point where he won't even visit if she doesn't give the go-ahead."

"She doesn't know about me, though," Jody stated with a frown. Millie not knowing about her almost sounded like a good thing now. "She already controls him so much that she probably wouldn't even let him text me without looking over his shoulder if she did."

"How do you know that, though?" April questioned curiously. Jody shot her a look; she'd already told her exactly how before the summer holidays had commenced. "I mean, you're only going off the fact that your social worker hasn't told you anything. How do you know that your brother hasn't already told her and that she isn't stopping him from seeing you right now?"

"He isn't like that!" Jody answered automatically, her tone tinged with irritation. Upon seeing the shocked look on April's face, she sighed and shook her head. "Sorry. I just"—she sighed again—"he's no coward. He stood up to ou—a bully for me when I was small. He wouldn't just sit there and let his girlfriend tell him not to talk to me."

Her confidence wavered as soon as she was done speaking, though, and she had to excuse herself, practically running over to the table which held what was left of her birthday cake. She picked up a glass of cola and downed it all in one go, and as she set the glass back down, she noticed that there was a new painting up on the wall opposite the table.

For all her virtues, Floss was an eager artist but perhaps not the best one. If Jody hadn't known that she and Tyler were the subjects of the painting, she wouldn't have been able to guess that it was supposed to be them. Even her own 'yeti' drawing of Tyler had been more accurate in depicting him; the bridegroom in the painting had black curls as opposed to brown. The bride, on the other hand, had the right hair colour but appeared to be too tall in relation to the groom and looked way too doll-faced

"Like it?" Floss inquired, joining Jody at the table. "I came second in the competition, but only because the winner was a total teacher's pet."

Jody laughed under her breath. "Seriously, Floss?" she asked lightly, more amused than annoyed. "I expected it to be way bigger."

"I didn't see you offering to buy me a bigger canvas," Floss retorted, reminding Jody that they all had to save up to be able to buy things required for their hobbies. She winced apologetically.

"Jody!" a familiar shrill voice shrieked, making said girl spin around as an ecstatic Candi-Rose ran up to her. Before she could even ask what was wrong, Candi-Rose blurted it out: "Brandon's here!"

.:. QK .:.

She would've been lying if she'd said that she wasn't happy seeing Brandon waiting around in the lobby for her but his presence at Ashdene Ridge simply wasn't worth the trouble. Him and Tyler being in the same building let alone room was enough to make her anxious, and as she placed the basket of fifteen cupcakes he'd brought her on the kitchen counter, she couldn't help but recall the stony expression she'd noticed on Tyler's face when Candi-Rose had announced Brandon's arrival. His utter dislike of Brandon rattled her; how were they supposed to remain 'best friends forever' if he couldn't stand her boyfriend?

As soon as she walked back into the lounge through the rear door, she was bombarded by questions from her friends who'd never once seen her boyfriend prior to today. Now that they had a face to attribute to the name, they were clearly interested in her love life in a way they'd never been before. To be honest, she'd never expected them to meet him and had only told them about him to put a stop to the school rumours about her and Tyler. She wondered what that said about their relationship.

"Yes, that's him: Brandon," she muttered, her eyes darting between Brandon and Tyler as the former chatted with Ryan of all people whereas the latter hung out with Alex by the pool table. Oh, hell no. There was no way she was going to let Ryan Reeves plant seeds of doubt in her boyfriend's head.

"Brandon!" she called, whizzing past her friends and reluctantly grabbing his hand. Sending a warning glare Ryan's way, she pulled Brandon away from him and took him out into the lobby; there was simply no space or privacy in the lounge. "Thanks for the cupcakes." She immediately let go of his hand, sitting down on the sofa in the lobby. "Fifteen for my age, yeah?"

"Yeah," he agreed, joining her on the sofa. If he was offended by her abruptly letting go of his hand, he didn't let it show. "I was going to get you something else but then I thought you wouldn't like it."

If it was make-up or jewellery, then he'd been right. She was negligent with the jewellery she owned to the point that her ear piercings were closing up, and she was inclined to let nature take its course. She'd never wanted the piercings in the first place; in order to solidify her girly-girl image, Denise had forced her to get them when she'd briefly gone back to live with her.

"Chocolate's my favourite," she simply told him, deciding to cut the sob-story crap he didn't need or want to hear.

"It looks like a cool party," he commented, "I did karaoke for my fourteenth birthday."

They continued to engage in small talk until silence fell between the two of them. Well, relative silence anyway: Chloe and Candi-Rose could be heard singing a duet from inside the lounge. Jody pressed her tongue against the right side of her cheek, wondering if talking about boxing would be quite appropriate. Due to the two of them mostly seeing each other at the gym, she'd never really been forced to face the fact that they had very little to talk about other than their one common interest.

Were all relationships like this? Or did theirs just need more work?

"Jody!" Charlie called, her voice wafting into the lobby. "We want another song from you!"

Any other day, three song requests would've pissed her off but today, it was her salvation. She smiled nervously at Brandon, not quite confident about singing in front of him, but she rose to her feet nonetheless. It was better than facing the deafening silence of her relationship.

.:. QK .:.

Later that day, long after the party was over and everyone was off doing their own thing, Jody lazed about in her bed, reading her birthday messages once more. They ranged from heartwarming to generic but she appreciated them all; even the generic ones were from people who cared enough to drop her a text in the first place. She smiled as she scrolled down to the very first message she'd received as soon as the clock had struck twelve, reading it yet another time.

_Happy birthday, Cody x_

_*Jody ;)_

She giggled, reaching over and grabbing the birthday cards on her bedside. The first was from Kingsley and doubled up as a request for money, as per usual; the second was from Luke, meaning he was still her only family member to remember all of her birthdays so far; the third was from Tyler, of course; and the fourth was a joint venture from the entire household. Having noticed something a little odd about it earlier, she opened the one from Luke and read the personal message again. It wasn't a particularly long one—not that it had to be—but it looked like it'd been written hastily which made her wonder if April was right after all. Was it possible that Luke had told Millie about her but now had to be even more secretive about contacting her because the controlling bitch didn't want him seeing her? But why would she do that? What threat was a fifteen-year-old little sister? It wasn't as if she was going to try and break them up, no matter how much she actually wanted to.

There was only one way to find out if April's suspicions were correct and, unfortunately, it was a risky one. It was the same stupid plan that'd been forming in her mind prior to the party and if it hadn't been for April, perhaps she wouldn't have gone through with it, but there was no turning back now. Exiting the message thread between herself and Tyler, she went to her contacts list and pressed on Luke's name. Clamping down on her nerves, she quickly typed up a message and hit send before she could lose her resolve.

_Thnx 4 the card. x_

The wait for a response was an agonising one. There was every chance that Luke would hate her for this and never speak to her again but it was worth it; she would rather not have a brother at all than continue to wonder when he'd tell Millie about her as if he was a married man and she was the  _other woman_ , waiting for him to divorce his wife. It was a somewhat inappropriate analogy given that she was his  _sister_ but it was exactly what she felt like. Well, either that or the secret love child, but she was already occupying that real-life role for Gray.

A beep drew her out of her thoughts, and her heart skipped a beat.

_Who is this?_

She bit her lip. There was no point in regretting; she'd already started and now she had to finish. This was either Luke or Millie texting her back; she'd either mildly alarmed her brother or she'd ruined her relationship with him forever.

_Jody._


	24. Chapter 24

Three days after her birthday, Jody's passport had finally arrived and she and Tyler went to the cinemas at the first opportunity. After much fuss over requiring photo ID, Tyler hadn't been asked to provide it anyway when it came to collecting their tickets, likely because he already appeared to be sixteen or seventeen, though Jody had, just as she'd expected.

As always, the pair of them took their time buying popcorn and whatnot to avoid sitting through thirty minutes of trailers and advertisements. Suddenly feeling the urge to go to the toilets, Jody handed her bag of popcorn to Tyler before running off to the ladies'. After quickly using the loo and washing her hands, she pulled her phone out of her pocket to check if she'd received any new messages. She hadn't.

She stood next to the dryer, questioning her decision to text Luke while full well knowing that Millie could see the text and misunderstand it. Sometimes, she thought she subconsciously thrived on trouble; she could've easily made it clear in the text that she was Luke's sister, but had chosen not to. Given that no one had replied, she could only assume that Millie had seen the text first and confronted Luke about it, and that Luke no longer wanted to talk to her because of it.

Turning her phone off and shoving it back into her pocket, she walked back out into the lobby to see Tyler chatting with a vaguely familiar girl. As she drew closer to the pair, she recognised the other girl as a Year Nine (or rather Year Ten) pupil.

"Oh, Jody," Tyler started as if he'd just noticed her presence. "This is Hannah. Hannah, Jody."

Jody narrowed her eyes at him as he passed her popcorn to her. "Thanks," she muttered, her eyes darting between him and 'Hannah'. "How many Hannahs do you know?"

"Err, just the one," he answered, and Hannah raised an eyebrow. "You know, Bill's sister?"

"Oh, you're Bill's sister?" Jody asked, trying not to let her sense of shock seep into her tone of voice.

This was  _not_  the leggy, tall dark-haired beauty she'd seen walking through the quad with her friends when she'd first found out that Tyler was dating someone. In fact, this was probably one of the girls she'd assumed to be Hannah's friend: one of the skinny, short-to-medium height brunettes.

"Yes," Hannah replied cheerfully, not seeming to be even the slightest bit jealous that her boyfriend (?) was at the movies with his ex-girlfriend (according to school gossip). "He's mentioned you from time to time. You sit next to him in...?"

"Maths, yeah," Jody supplied, feeling awkward. What had Bill said about her? He was a mate, but the sort of annoying one she'd only made friends with because they shared a few classes and mutual friends. "What's the idiot said? Nothing bad, I hope."

Hannah laughed, and Jody suddenly saw why Brad had spoken so 'highly' of her. Despite looking average at first glance, she was incredibly pretty in the girl-next-door kind of way. "No, of course not," she assured, before glancing at her phone. "Oh, I've got to go: my date's waiting inside for me. It was nice catching up with you, Tyler, and nice meeting you, Jody."

"See ya!" Tyler called after her as she scurried towards one of the entrances to a block of screening rooms.

Looking at Tyler and suggesting that they finally go to their own allocated screening room, Jody silently processed what had just taken place. Firstly, Hannah wasn't who she'd thought she was, and secondly, said girl was definitely not Tyler's girlfriend. As the staff checked their tickets and let them in, Jody wanted so badly to ask Tyler what exactly was going on between him and Hannah—if they were casually dating or had stopped seeing each other altogether—but the words got stuck in her throat. It wasn't really her place, was it? After all, he had told her that he and Hannah were none of his business, just as she and Brandon were none of his.

Still, as she followed him into Screen Four, she couldn't squash the wave of relief brought on by the knowledge that Tyler wasn't currently taken, even though she was well aware that she had no right to feel that way.  _She_  was still taken, even if he wasn't.

.:. QK .:.

"You know," Tyler began, pushing the front door open, "that idiot Bill spoilt the film for me weeks ago."

"What?!" she exclaimed as she followed him into the lobby, outraged. No wonder he hadn't been as shocked as she had by some of the plot twists. "When I see him again, I'm gonna kill him!"

"Still, it was fun watching you react to the twists. You were funnier than the actual movie," he commented, playfully winking at her. She responded to his cheek by swatting him on the arm and as they shared a quiet smile, eyes sparkling (at least his were), it was almost as if they'd gone back to before their explosive argument, before Hannah, and most importantly, before Brandon. Almost.

She tore her gaze away from him, returning to reality. Their friendship was so fragile these days; she couldn't afford to complicate things further by responding positively to his borderline flirtatious behaviour. Time had not reversed, no matter how much it felt like it had, and she had a duty to herself and to Brandon.

"They're back!" she heard Taz yell, and was grateful for the welcome distraction.

Joseph came bounding around the corner, or rather the bookshelf next to the sofa, and stopped short of actually colliding into Tyler. "Jody, your brother's here! In the Quiet Room!"

If it was anyone other than Joseph telling her this, she would have thought it was a joke, because Luke had to know better than to show up unannounced by now. What game was he playing? He hadn't bothered to text her back or arrange another meeting via Simon, making her agonise over how she'd messed things up for good for  _three whole days_ , but now he was here, just like that? She wasn't impressed, not least because his showing up randomly meant that the reparation of their relationship was no longer happening on her terms. She'd known she was giving up some sort of control over the whole situation when she'd texted him and thus revealed her number to him but she'd hoped he'd continue to respect her wishes by only visiting Ashdene Ridge when she wanted him to. Apparently not.

Thanking Joseph, she quickly headed for the room she often lurked around in these days when the hustle and bustle of sharing a house with several bored kids all day got to her. For his part, her sneaky brother at least had the decency to appear sheepish upon seeing her. She merely glanced his way as she closed the door behind her before sitting down on the sofa opposite him. He didn't say anything the first few seconds so she decided to cut to the chase herself.

"Any reason you didn't text back?" she asked, doing nothing to keep the bitterness out of her voice. He seemed to be taken aback by her straightforwardness but she took no notice. "Or at least arrange a meeting through Simon like you were meant to?"

"Hold on, Jody," he started, his features hardening. He looked shockingly like Kingsley somewhere around the eyes, giving her some pause. She'd never actually seen him angry before. Upset, yes, but never angry. " _You_  texted  _me_ at risk of Millie finding out. If anything, I should be the one getting annoyed!"

"Why, because I let your precious girlfriend find out that you have a little sister?!" she spat, her voice rising. Why the hell was he so scared of his own girlfriend, especially one he was planning to live with? It was disconcerting, to say the least.

He scoffed. "I deleted it before she could see it."

The implication was not lost on her: once again, he'd voluntarily given up the chance to contact her for _that woman_. "So you basically deleted my number again?! That's great! Thanks for that!"

"Yes, I did, but I realised something," he said, clasping his hands together. "You're probably going to text me again and again until she eventually does find out about you."

She blinked, a heavy crushing sensation taking root in her chest. Was that what he thought of her? Honestly, if she'd known of his low opinion of her sooner, she would've found a way to tell Millie the truth ages ago. She pressed her lips together as the horrible truth slowly dawned on her: her brother didn't know her at all. He couldn't, could he, not if he thought she was the type to go around ruining lives for the sake of it? Then again, she'd been a different person at nine-years-old and perhaps that Jody was the one he saw when he looked at her—a venomous vindictive little brat. There was no doubt she would've turned out to be a right monster at fifteen years of age if not for her carers and friends. She jutted her chin out, not bothering to defend herself; it'd only fall on deaf ears. "Why didn't you just block my number then?"

"I could've," he answered, nodding slowly, "but I honestly don't think it would've been enough to stop you."

Any other time, she would've taken such a statement as a compliment but she knew it wasn't one coming from her disgruntled brother. To quote Kingsley, he was too p****-whipped to see her as anything other than a threat to his relationship, just like their father had been. Or Luke and Kingsley's father, anyway; she hadn't forgotten her incomplete birth certificate just yet.

"So?" she prompted, already tired of the conversation. He obviously had a point, so why wouldn't he get to it already? It wasn't like he was even a tiny bit bothered about potentially hurting her feelings.

"So I've decided it's time you meet her," he responded, sighing as if he was proposing a last resort. It was difficult not to feel offended.

"Why?" she questioned, crossing her arms in a show of unhappiness. "I don't want to meet her."

"You've got to," he insisted weakly, a pleading edge to his voice. "Otherwise, she'll never believe me."

She almost snorted. Honestly, why was he even with that bitch? What good was a girlfriend who constantly required proof of everything in her man's life? Granted, he hadn't said 'constantly' but if Millie needed to see a little sister to believe in her existence, it was all too easy to imagine what else she demanded evidence for.

"You could just show her a photo of us."

He paled. "I couldn't."

"Why not? It's not as if—"  _Oh, of course._.. If Luke couldn't keep her number on his phone because Millie would think it was another woman's, how could he dare to keep a photo of her on it? It seemed like Millie wasn't above viewing Luke as a nonce—any sane person would be able to see that Jody was underage. "Yeah, alright," she relented, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as his eyes literally shone.

He could think what he wanted (as he already did regarding her character) but she hadn't agreed for his sake. Given his opinion of her, she wasn't so sure she wanted him in her life, anyway. No, she was going to do this for her own peace of mind; if seeing Millie was what she had to do to finally put an end to the months-long nonsense caused by Luke's lies, she'd gladly do it.

.:. QK .:.

An entire week passed before Luke arranged for Jody to meet the supposed love of his life because he'd been busy working his new graduate job all week. She'd nearly forgotten that while pupils got a six- to seven-week break during the summer, adults enjoyed no such luxuries unless they booked annual leave which was only a few weeks in its entirety as opposed to collective months of school holidays. Apparently, Christmas wasn't even an automatic holiday! She wrinkled her nose. This atrocious lack of time off was one aspect of adulthood she was happy to wait for.

Whether by chance or design, Luke had picked the park near Gray's house for their meeting, and that was how she found herself sitting there on a bench, feeling totally juvenile as little kids and their parents played together around her. A little girl being pushed by her father on one of the baby swings caught her attention in particular, and she couldn't help but imagine Gray and his daughter—other daughter, of course—doing something similar together shortly after he'd walked out. Perhaps even the day after; Gray's daughter hadn't appeared to be significantly younger than her, meaning he'd started bed-hopping far earlier than she'd initially thought. Maybe she wasn't his only accidental daughter...

"Hello."

Tearing her gaze away from the tiny girl and her daddy, Jody turned her head to see Luke standing next to the bench,  _alone_.

"Hi," she replied, craning her neck to see if there was anyone hovering around him, just in case Millie was petite like her. Alas, it was just him.

"I'm sorry; she refused to leave the house," he explained, digging his hands into his pockets like he used to. Like old Luke used to. "I told you she was difficult."

Her ears perked up at the mention of the house, and she almost didn't hear what he said after that. Their last talk had been so short and fraught with tension that she'd neglected to ask him if he'd moved into his new place yet. She hoped to God that Millie was pulling her own weight around the house.

"You found a place? You didn't tell me." He opened his mouth to respond but she continued, "Oh yeah, you couldn't because you deleted my number again."

"Jody..." he trailed off, looking uncomfortable. Apparently he had no intention of sitting down next to her. "Come on, this isn't like you."

"Isn't it?!" she snapped, raising her eyebrows in mock confusion. "I thought I was the type to do anything in order to expose you in front of Millie!"

"That's not what I said at all," he protested tiredly. Oh, so now she was exhausting to deal with: a right nuisance of a younger sister.

She leant back against the bench, donning the fakest smile she could muster. "What did you mean then? Because it sure sounded like you were dissing me..."

"Only that us Jacksons can do anything if we put our minds to it." She laughed under her breath. She didn't know about Luke but Denise and Kingsley had only ever used their brains to commit crime and make immoral money.

"I'm not a Jackson," she pointed out, wondering if he even knew about her name change. "Not anymore."

"Yes, I know," he answered, before hesitating a little. "But you're not a Gray either."

"Hmm... My passport says I am." He didn't react. "So does my birth certificate, even though Kingsley Gray isn't on it." She fixed him with a look, silently asking him if he was legally fatherless as well, and he shifted almost imperceptibly but didn't say anything. She sighed. This conversation was pointless, and she'd wasted a journey coming here. "Why are you here, Luke?"

He regarded her in perplexity. "I couldn't just leave you out here waiting for me and Millie."

"No," she said exasperatedly, lazily resting her head against the back of the bench. "I mean why are you really here? You could've just called Mike or May-Li to let me know that you couldn't make it because of your girlfriend."

"But I did make it," he stated, squaring his shoulders. She just stared at him, not saying a word, and his pathetic attempt at a smile quickly turned into a frown. "Wait, you think I only wanted to see you to introduce you to Millie?"

She blinked at him. "Didn't you?"

"Of course not!" he exclaimed, finally sitting down next to her. "I wanted to catch up."

Not knowing what to make of that apparently truthful answer, she turned away from him and stared straight ahead. The baby girl and her father were no longer there, having been replaced by a male toddler and his mother.

"Did Mum ever take me to the park?" she asked, nodding at the boy to indicate what age she was referring to. "I can't remember."

"She might've," he responded after a beat, though she was sure he was lying to make her feel better. "I was pretty young myself."

"You would've been eight or nine." She remembered nearly every family meeting/event that'd happened after she'd turned eight. It was hard not to. "It's not that young." She swallowed deeply, recalling the rare good times she and Denise had had before the social services took her. "I'd hoped that she at least liked me when I was small but she didn't, did she?"

She caught him squirming out of the corner of her eye. It was all the answer she needed. "If it's any... consolation, she didn't like me very much either. She just gradually stopped caring after Dad left and Kingsley joined the gang."

"But she still tried to make  _you_  feel bad for not being good to  _her_ ," she muttered, the time Denise guilt tripped her to help trick Grant coming to mind.

Luke made a noise of agreement, and for the first time since Millie happened, Jody felt like she shared a real connection with her brother, even if it was mostly due to mutual commiseration over their mother. Now that Millie  _knew_ , could they finally resume a normal brother and sister relationship? Before she could even start 'catching up', she got her answer in the form of Luke's phone ringing.

By the time he turned to her with an apologetic expression on his face, she knew what was up. Millie clearly didn't intend for her boyfriend to put another woman before her, even if it was just a little sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I know I was gone for AGES but other Muslims out there will know what I mean when I say that the end of Ramadan and Eid is basically a whirlwind that doesn't allow for free time. To top that all off, I had exams last week leading up to Eid so it was a damn stressful time. I'm back now though!**


	25. Chapter 25

_Something came up._  Oh, of course, it had. It always did. It'd been three months since Luke had finally told Millie and (presumably) his mates about Jody, but she'd only seen him a few times in the last two months. While she'd expected to see him less during term time than the summer holidays for obvious reasons, she hadn't anticipated the random last minute cancellations he'd thrown at her at least twice now. She was beginning to lose faith in him all over again; despite being good at heart, he was turning out to be a terrible brother at the expense of being a better boyfriend. She wasn't stupid—she knew his girlfriend was behind the numerous cancellations.

Honestly, she'd expected the university-born relationship to have fizzled out by now but the two were still going strong, much to her dismay. She hadn't even had the pleasure of meeting the woman who kept her brother away from her so often; there was always some sort of excuse for why said woman couldn't accompany Luke on one of his rare visits. As if the cancellations weren't bad enough, Millie managed to dig her claws into Luke even when he didn't cancel; he'd had to cut their most recent meeting short because Millie had needed him back at home to 'fix the window', as if repairmen didn't exist. Then again, maybe Millie thought Luke was her personal repairman as well as her servant, seeing as she had him at her beck and call.

If she wasn't mad at him for cancelling one time too many, Jody would've felt sorry for her brother. His girlfriend clearly wasn't any good for him in the long run and was most likely using him because she couldn't afford to pay the full rent on a place of her own. If she paid any rent at all, that was; Jody hadn't had the heart to ask Luke if Millie was contributing to his household in any way, but she had a feeling that the answer was no, at least in the financial department. Oftentimes, she wished she could oust the unpleasant woman from her brother's life but after a couple of her ill-fated schemes at the DG, she knew better than to dig around for dirt on Millie and end up inviting more trouble. Besides, that one time she had tried to warn Luke about _that woman,_  he hadn't wanted to listen to her at all. He loved Millie, and apparently, she loved him back. If he reckoned he loved her, what could Jody do about it?

Anyway, she had bigger things to concern herself with, namely Tyler's mum not showing up for her fortnightly visit. She'd never missed one before, not without cancelling at least twenty-four hours in advance, so Tyler had gone to check up on her, outside of contact, and Mike had allowed him to. Jody could only hope that Sally wasn't sick again. Tyler didn't admit it all too often but it was plain to her that he was buckling under the pressure of their upcoming GCSE exams (still six or seven months away but looming ever closer), his podcasts and being on the forum, and that his mother being ill would push him over the edge. Since his mother's illness was apparently hereditary—she'd searched it up sometime last year—she worried that too much stress could cause him to get the same illness.

A knock to the door put an end to her ruminations, and she immediately sat up and called for the person on the other end to come in, wondering if it was Tyler, back from his mother's. He had set out quite a while. She got her answer when Charlie popped her head 'round the door.

"Hi," Jody greeted, warily eyeing the older girl's wide smile. What was she so happy about?

"Hi," Charlie responded, leaning in from the doorway with her hand still on the handle. "Bird's just challenged us all: he'll do our chores if we beat him at a game."

Jody had, of course, noticed that the others frequently asked Bird to do things for them but she'd thought he did them because he wanted to, not because he was being forced to. The challenge said otherwise.

"What game?"

"Anything!" Charlie answered, her smile growing wider, if possible. "We get to choose. I'm picking Jenga. Should I get Candi-Rose to add your name to the list?"

"List?" she asked, swinging her legs over the edge of her bed. "How many people are involved in this thing?"

"Umm, eight. Well, only five of us are playing Bird; Candi-Rose, Ryan and Jay are just going to watch. Tyler's gone out somewhere, and Joseph and Taz are off making slime, so..."

She just nodded, not really interested in the whereabouts/activities of the entire household. Now that she thought about it, if Bird did her laundry, hoovering, and clothes-hanging duties, she'd have some time to blow off steam at the gym. She'd got used to going nearly every day during the half term that had just come and gone, and was practically itching for another go. As for the challenge, beating Bird at a video game was a done deal.

"Yeah, add my name to the list."

.:. QK .:.

Funnily enough, Sally hadn't shown up because she'd been so busy spending time with her fiancé that she'd forgotten all about the scheduled visit to Ashdene Ridge. Well, not  _funnily_ , exactly, but strangely because now Tyler was fighting the same battle she was: having to share a family member's time with their significant other. Like her, Tyler was horribly jealous, but unlike her, he was not minding his own business and leaving the adults be. Instead, he'd gone on to actively stalk his future stepfather.

She'd been unimpressed for many reasons, the chief one being that Kamal hadn't prevented Sally from seeing Tyler, a luxury that said boy had taken for granted; Johnny's stepdad had attempted to put a wedge between him and his mum even after they'd split up. His childishness was seriously grating at her nerves.

Sure, she'd been a little surprised to hear that her best friend's mother had become engaged after only a month of dating but seeing as her own mother had started considering marriage a month into her relationship (?) with Grant, it didn't seem like too big of a deal. Sally and Denise were quite different, anyway. For one, Sally was not with Kamal for his money. Rather, if Tyler was to be believed, it was the other way around, but Jody was sure that asking someone to pay for a pizza didn't equal financial exploitation. Not that it mattered, anyway, because the guy apparently had another woman, and that was unforgivable.

She sighed heavily. Tyler was in the Quiet Room right now, no doubt telling Sally that Kamal was cheating on her. He was wasting his time—his mother was never going to believe him, just like Luke hadn't wanted to hear another bad word about Millie. She shook her head. She did not want to think about  _her_.

Seeking a distraction, she walked into the lounge, intent on watching some TV until Tyler was done talking to his mum, only to find a downtrodden Candi-Rose standing by the pool table. She hadn't seen the younger girl this upset since that time she'd fallen out with Chloe during the Grant fiasco.

"Candi?" she spoke, approaching the pool table. "What's wrong?"

Candi-Rose blinked before looking down at her unpainted nails. "Nothing."

"C'mon, it's not nothing," Jody said plainly, crossing her arms. Seeing the younger girl be anything but happy felt wrong, no matter how annoying she was when she was being herself. "Do you wanna talk in your room?"

"No," Candi-Rose replied quickly, leaning against the table. "It's just—Well, it's Bird."

Okay... "What about him? Did Finn beat him as well?"

"He tricked Ryan!" Candi-Rose cried, shocking Jody with the sudden emotion in her voice. "He's been pretending to be rubbish at pool this whole time but he beat Ryan after getting him to agree to take on the chores everyone else had played him for!"

Jody chuckled, unable to help herself. "It's always the quiet ones!" she exclaimed, trying to picture Ryan's defeated face. She'd only seen it once, back when she'd beaten him at their private Kung Fu challenge, and, oh God, had it been satisfying. She quickly frowned upon seeing Candi-Rose's serious expression, however. "Am I missing something? You don't even like Ryan."

Candi-Rose huffed. "It's not about Ryan; he deserves what he gets, especially after..." She shook her head. "It's about Bird; he's supposed to be better than Ryan! He's not supposed to trick people or hurt them!"

"It's not like he tricked an innocent kid," Jody commented, failing to see the problem. Bird was standing up for himself. Good for him. She'd always liked him; he always minded his own business, unlike certain others. "It's  _Ryan_."

"You don't get it," Candi-Rose stated miserably. "You don't know him like I do." She sighed. "Like I did." Jody looked around, not understanding where this was going. "Oh, I don't know, maybe I'm just bad at reading people! Maybe I was just seeing who I wanted to see in him instead of who he actually is."

Pursing her lips, Jody wondered what she'd got herself into. Despite having lived with him for over half a year, she didn't know Bird well enough to make a proper comment on the situation. She had to try, though, if only because he seemed to be a nice guy.

"Hey, I'm sure he's a decent guy," she assured, offering what she hoped was a smile. "He's, uhh, never tricked me."

"Well, then, why did you take advantage of him?" Candi-Rose questioned flatly, narrowing her eyes. "It was hard enough getting him to open up to me. With you and everyone else using him, Jay will turn him against us all without even trying."

"Advantage?"

"Yes! Everyone's always taking advantage of him because he wants to be nice to us," Candi-Rose complained. "You included. Why?"

Jody had no answer to that. While she hadn't realised that everyone was using Bird to such an extent, she'd participated in the playoffs knowing that he'd been somewhat pressured into doing chores for the others. It was his own fault for not standing up for himself but it was wrong of her and the others to use that against him. Her own brother had the same weakness as Bird and his girlfriend milked it for all it was worth for which Jody hated her... but she wasn't much better, was she?

Underneath it all, was she just as bad as Millie?

.:. QK .:.

Jody sat on Tyler's bed, once again waiting for him to return from his mum's. If she hadn't completely been put off spying before, she definitely was now; a mere hour ago, she'd spied on Kamal for Tyler which had led to Sally dumping Kamal over a misunderstanding. She'd been right to stay out of Luke's relationship after the texting incident. He was an adult. Hopefully, he'd realise what Millie was and get rid of her himself, preferably before she made herself even more of a permanent fixture in his life. She just had to be patient, like Tyler should've been.

The door opened without warning and Tyler walked in, his eyes widening slightly upon seeing her.

"Oh, there you are," he said, leaving the door open and just standing there. "I've been looking for you."

She cast around for something to say, wondering if she should get up but he sat down at the foot of the bed, motioning for her to stay. "Could've just texted me," she stated lightly. He smiled and nodded before hanging his head in apparent shame. Uh-oh. Had Sally got angry at him? "How did it go?"

He looked back up at her, seemingly stunned for a second. "Oh, yeah, Kamal proposed to Mum with his granny's ring, and she said yes," he answered with another smile, though this one didn't quite reach his eyes.

"What's wrong then...?" she asked, confused by his behaviour. Did he just not like Kamal? She had to admit, the guy did seem a little full of himself... but so were a lot of people, including some of their housemates. It was hardly criminal.

"I just don't get something," he admitted, furrowing his eyebrow. "She said she didn't care about that first ring being cheap..."

She released an amused breath through her nose. "So?"

" _So_  I thought girls liked sparkly, expensive stuff."

"Tyler, your mum is not a  _girl_!" she exclaimed, giggling despite herself. "And I don't like sparkly stuff. I hate jewellery!" He gave her a questioning brow. "Well, I'm alright with the simple stuff, I suppose. I just don't like huge jewels..."

"Yeah, but you still like expensive things, don't you?"

Didn't everyone? What did he mean? "Like what?"

"Well, the places Brandon takes you," he replied, a strange expression on his face. She blinked, not having heard Brandon's name coming from his lips in ages. "You know, fancy restaurants and the like."

"He's only taken me to a restaurant once," she told him, feeling defensive. How did he even know about that? Candi-Rose? Sasha, even? "And everyone likes fancy things once in a while. Don't you?" He bit his lip. "What's your point?"

"Nothing. I don't have a point," he insisted, clearing his throat. She fixed him with a stern look and he sighed. "I mean, you wouldn't want to be with someone who doesn't have money, would you? I just thought my mum wouldn't want to be with someone who can't even get her a proper ring because it'd mean he's broke or something. Of course, now I know he had something better up his sleeve but I didn't know that at the time and neither did she."

"You're getting a little dinosaur age again," she warned, crossing her arms. "Women work now; they don't have to pick husbands based on how much money they have and men don't have to pay for everything."

Of course, that didn't stop people like Denise (and probably Millie) from dating men for money but they were hopefully in the minority.

"I suppose," he agreed, turning towards her. "I'm not saying men should pay for everything but people like my mother deserve to be treated, don't they? She's been working so hard to come back from her illness; she deserves it."

"Yeah, of course, but from what you've said, I have a feeling she wouldn't have minded giving that up if it meant being with the right guy."

There was a sort of uncomfortable pause then, and she suddenly found it difficult to look him in the eyes. It'd been playing on her mind for a while now, since he'd first brought up the money issue: the idea that he hadn't made a move on her when given the opportunity because he didn't have much money. It had, after all, been the excuse he'd provided when he'd told her that he wouldn't take her to the pictures. At first, it'd seemed like a silly thought—a desperate attempt to reconcile herself to the fact that he'd rejected her—but everything he'd been doing and saying as of late only backed her theory up.

"You're right," he spoke up, finally breaking the silence. "She said as much when she came 'round earlier." She smiled, vindicated by his statement, and he jerked an eyebrow at her. "Since when did you start believing in all that right guy, wrong guy stuff? Sounds more like Candi-Rose's thing."

She shrugged, honestly not having a clue. She'd never been the sappy type, not even when she'd started dating Brandon, so where was this coming from? Was there really such a thing as a right guy (or girl) or were there many one could choose from? If so, why did people have to wade through disastrous relationships like that of her parents before finding the right person? Why couldn't they just meet 'the one'?

Why did Luke have to be with Millie?

Why did she still get the butterflies around Tyler when she'd been someone else's girlfriend for over five months?

Why wasn't she making an effort to see Brandon outside of boxing?

Why, why, why?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yup, I was gone for ages again. Can't say I had writer's block because this thing is all planned out and I knew exactly what I was going to write in this chapter but the words wouldn't come out. Once I did start typing though, I was able to get it done as quickly as I've done other chapters in the past. Also, I'm going through some shit but I suppose one can't sit around and cry about their problems forever, no matter how much they want to, especially if the cause is permanent circumstances.**
> 
> **Anyway, enough about me. I've resumed my TDG marathon with my brothers and we've just watched S6e14. I noticed that Taz told Joseph he'd have his own room if he was fostered which was odd considering the fact that he already had his own room at Ashdene Ridge by that point; he'd moved out of Finn's room and into Archie's early on in S6 and got the room to himself when Archie got fostered. Blooper? There's also the fact that S6e13 happened on a Thursday and there was talk of art homework and a school disco but no one appeared to actually go to school! It's weird! I love this show but it wouldn't hurt for the writers to have a scene or two where someone says 'oh I just got back from school' or 'I've got to get ready for school'. Pretty sure Tracy and her housemates were shown in school uniform from time to time in TSOTB. They might not have the budget for it in TDG but it'd make it more authentic.**


	26. Chapter 26

"Your mum does things quickly," Jody commented, standing in the doorway as Tyler rummaged through his drawers. "She met Kamal two months ago, got engaged a month after that and now, another month later, you're going to her wedding in Vegas!"

She'd always wanted to go abroad, especially to the US, ever since she was in junior school and one of her friends there had gone to Disneyworld. Jody could still remember the intense jealousy she'd felt at the time and loathed to admit to herself that she was feeling the same thing towards Tyler albeit not as strongly. For the most part, she was happy for him. This wouldn't be his first trip abroad but it'd be the first he'd remember, especially since it marked a special occasion in his (mother's) life.

"I know," he agreed, closing one drawer and opening another. "I just wish they'd waited until at least Spring. Who gets married in December?"

"Mike?" It had come as a shock, though a pleasant one, to them all when they'd found out that Mike had proposed to Fiona. Their wedding was to take place _here_ in a little over two weeks: fifteen days, to be exact.

"True that," he concurred before blowing out his cheeks and stepping away from the drawers. "Can't find it. Don't know where I put it last."

Having watched him desperately search his storage furniture for a good twenty minutes, she took pity on him and decided to intervene. "Have you checked the bathroom cabinet?"

His eyes widened. "No."

She barely moved out in time as he darted past her and down the hallway. "You might've thrown it out anyway!" she called after him. "You haven't actually used it in years!"

He re-emerged moments later with empty hands, dejectedly trudging back into his room. She had no idea why he was suddenly obsessed with taming his hair; the messy, unhampered curls were his trademark look. He even went to work looking like that. Why would he have to smooth it down for his mother's wedding? Would he do the same at Mike's wedding?

"I'll have to ask around to see if someone's got some I can borrow over the weekend," he said, hanging around near the doorway. Near her. "Candi-Rose probably has a spare, doesn't she?"

"If you want to literally smell like roses, then yeah, I'm sure she does," she answered, giggling.

He chuckled, his eyes twinkling. "I don't mind, you know. What do you think men's hairspray smells like anyway?"

"Well, that stuff you put on last time reeked," she admitted, though not unkindly.

"Did it really?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow. Peering up at him, she realised he was practically in her personal space. When had that happened? "Can't say the same about you; your hair always smells so good."

She gripped the door handle behind her, wanting to laugh and tell him how cringeworthy he sounded but couldn't, not when her heart was racing a hundred miles per hour. It'd be hypocritical of her anyway; she'd been guilty of similar stupid thoughts about him many a time, some of them occurring as recently as her last spar with Brandon. The only difference was that Tyler had voiced his embarrassing thought directly to her, breaking some sort of unspoken rule between them. He seemed to regret it, though, because his face was beetroot red.

"Uhh, thanks," she managed hoarsely, her own face burning. She'd long known that he liked her hair out but this was something else. A change of subject was required. "You know your mum likes your hair how it is," she said, remembering him offhandedly telling her so  _years_  ago. "She wouldn't want you to put product in it."

"You reckon?" he asked in a slightly high voice. Perhaps wisely, he stepped back a little, putting some distance between them. "I mean, I don't want to look like an idiot."

"You wouldn't," she assured, releasing the door handle from her sweaty grip. Gross. "Not because of your hair, anyway."

They didn't do it as much anymore but they used to call each other 'idiot' as a joke on a near daily basis and now she wondered how appropriate that had been given that they were care kids with serious issues. She certainly hoped that he'd never taken the name-calling seriously; it was already bad enough that he (they) lived with someone who regularly put others down for his own amusement.

"I wish you could go with me," he divulged, not looking bashful anymore.

To be honest, so did she, and not just because it was taking place abroad. For obvious reasons, she'd never been invited to a wedding before. As shallow as it sounded, Mike's simply didn't count; she literally lived at the venue and would have to be there either way. She doubted she'd ever go to a wedding the rest of the household wasn't invited to. Even if her worst case Luke/Millie scenario (them getting married) played out, she still wouldn't have the honour of being a wedding guest, if Millie's current treatment of her was anything to go by.

"Well, we're going to Mike's wedding together, aren't we?" she countered, tipping her head to the side. She didn't wait for his reaction, pushing herself away from the door(way) and walking into the room. "C'mon, you need to pack."

.:. QK .:.

She hadn't hugged him when it came time for him to get into Kamal's car, instead opting to wave him off like the others. The reason was simple: the feelings she constantly tried so hard to ignore always tended to flare up whenever she was faced with physical contact. During the summer holidays, she'd rather foolishly thought that she was starting to see him in a platonic light but by the time November rolled 'round, she knew that _nothing_  had changed. In fact, the only difference between now, and, say, last year, was that she had a boyfriend, which didn't even matter because she didn't see much of Brandon. There had been that short period of time she'd become obsessed with spending time with him to the point that she'd ignored her friends, but Mike had soon put an end to that, and it had only happened in the first place because she'd been trying to avoid Tyler.

The more she thought about it, the more she realised that this trip and the literal distance that came with it would be a good thing for  _her_. Others would call her a cynic but ever since she'd first started developing feelings for Tyler, she'd wondered if it was solely because she lived in the same house as him. Okay, not solely, perhaps, but  _mostly_. After all, it was difficult enough getting over a crush on a best friend without having to see him at home every breakfast and dinner (and lunch, on the weekends). Of course, it wasn't so much a crush anymore as it was something else, something that scared the living daylights out of her, but it didn't stop her from contemplating a different reality. For instance, would the crush have fizzled out if he'd been a best friend from school rather than one from home? Would she have fancied Brandon in the same way if he'd lived here since age nine in Tyler's place? Would she have developed these feelings at all if he'd got fostered by the funny lady he'd met the day before Ryan had arrived? There was no way of knowing, of course—as if the universe would ever make things that easy—but she wondered all the same.

That night, after a long evening in the gym with Brandon, who increasingly felt more like a sparring partner than anything else, she curled up in bed and drifted off to sleep with thoughts of him and Tyler plaguing her mind.

¤  _The next morning, she dragged herself down the stairs the same way she always did whenever she was woken up unnaturally early on a Saturday morning. She ambled into the kitchen, the ground beneath her bare feet feeling unusually soft, and grabbed some breakfast, nearly dropping her plate of toast when she turned towards the dining table._

 _"Brandon?!" she shrieked, staring at him as he munched on what looked like a cereal bar. He and the other occupants of the table_ — _Jay, Candi-Rose and Alex_ — _stared back at her in bewilderment._

_"Yeah?" he prompted, before chugging down a glass of water. "Have you changed your mind, then?"_

_She blinked. About what? What was he even doing here? He never came round without being asked to, especially not this early. "Huh?"_

_"About coming to the gym with me," he answered, standing up and checking his watch. He didn't wear a watch. "I'm leaving in about half an hour."_

_"What are you doing here?!" she demanded, her confusion only growing stronger as he whispered something in Candi-Rose's ear. WHAT!_

_He stopped his whispering, raising an eyebrow right at her. "Uhh, I live here."_

_WHAT?!_

_Jody turned on her heel and ran the hell out of Dodge, the plate in her hands disappearing as she walked right into the language corridor in school. Glancing down, she saw that she was now in full school uniform and looked up just in time to avoid bumping into a fellow pupil._

_Finally, and embarrassingly lately, it dawned on her that she was dreaming. Of course, she was. How else could she have floated on her feet in the kitchen?_

_"Jody!"_

_The scene shifted again and now she was sitting in her Year Ten Maths classroom as one of the German teachers droned on in what sounded like French. She shook her head._

_"Psst, Jody!"_

_She turned around in her seat. Tyler._ ¤

Jody's eyes snapped open, Tyler's beaming face lost to her within seconds. The time on her phone read 03:13. She yawned, turning over on her back, away from the numerous photographs of the two of them plastered all over the wall on her left. How strange. She hadn't dreamt since she was, like, ten.

.:. QK .:.

By the time the clock struck eleven, Saturday already felt like such a drag. It was stupid, really, seeing as Tyler was usually at the radio station by this time anyway but, somehow, something was already amiss. Did his presence at breakfast really make such a difference? Why? They barely spoke most mornings, especially since they'd started coming to breakfast separately.

"Jody?"

She snapped out of her daze, scrambling to look something approaching normal as her brother took a seat next to her. "Luke," she responded, donning what she hoped was a winning smile. "How are you?"

He'd pretty much blindsided her with his visit, having been off the radar for over a month. He still contacted her through Simon, a sad sign that he hadn't yet stood up to Millie, and owing to Tyler's departure, she'd forgotten all about her social worker informing her about the visit two days prior.

"Very well, thanks," he answered, and she tuned out for the rest of the conversation because she knew it all by heart anyway: small talk, an excuse as to why Millie couldn't join them, and an interrupting phone call or text to cut the visit short.

Only this time, they managed to 'talk' for twenty minutes without his phone going off, and he even had the time to go out into the garden with her. After a minute or two of taking in the cold December air, Luke turned to her and said, "I've not seen Tyler around today. Has he left care?"

"No," she replied flippantly, the very thought of Tyler leaving filling her with dread. "He's at his mum's wedding."

"Oh," he let out, dropping the posh act for once as he dug his hands into his pockets. "She's getting married with a son still in care...? Isn't that a little...?"

"A little what?" she asked defensively. "Mum used me to bag a new husband. Well, she tried anyway. Tyler's didn't. That already makes her a better mum in my book."

If it was anyone else, like Denise, she'd agree that they were selfish for moving on with their life when they couldn't even look after their own child but Sally was in the rare category of parents who had a legitimate reason for not having been able to. By all accounts, she hadn't even wanted to give him up and was willing to take him back as soon as she was able but he'd decided himself that he wanted to stay in care longer and that was why he was still here. With her. She frowned. Now that Sally was getting married, would she want to complete her family by asking Tyler to move in again? Would he say yes?

"Sorry, I didn't mean to judge," Luke apologised softly. "Of course, you're right. Mum should've never used you like that." She allowed herself to snort, knowing that no one who mattered was around to hear the unattractive noise. 'Mum' should've never done a multitude of things but that'd never stopped her, had it? "You didn't go to the wedding with him? Is that why you're upset?"

"Why would I go with him?" she questioned, sniffing. Did she really look upset? What would he know? He didn't see her frequently enough to know what she looked like when 'upset'. "Let's go inside."

He nodded and walked towards the patio door with her. "Well, he came to the funeral with you so I thought..."

She bit back a smile as they entered the kitchen. A wedding and a funeral were hardly the same thing, though she understood what he was getting at. "He would've taken me with him if he could. The wedding's in Vegas, so..."

A look of understanding washed over his face. "Ah."

She opened her mouth, about to ask him if she actually did appear to be upset, when his phone rang. "Ah," she mimicked instead. There it was: the dreaded phone call she'd been waiting for with bated breath.

"Love?" he said into the phone, shooting Jody the usual 'sorry' expression. "Yes, don't worry. Yes, of course, I will." Yes, yes, yes. He'd never once said no. Was he even capable of it?

"See you later, then," she said dismissively, as soon as he ended the call. He didn't even bother pretending that he wished he could stay longer this time but she found that she didn't mind as much. He'd stayed a lot longer than he usually did, at least.

Utterly bored out of her mind after Luke had left, she'd visited Sasha and Dexter, and had gone to the gym, in that order, and the day had seemed to pass just that little bit quicker. Dexter had a girlfriend now—one that was questionably or perhaps predictably older than him—and Murphy and their little sister had grown up considerably since she'd last seen them. Seeing Brandon, however, had thrown her off because looking at him reminded her of the funny dream she'd had last night. The idea of him being in care seemed as wrong as that of her not being in care; even in her dreams, she was still a care kid.

That night, she fell asleep watching Tyler's Snapchat story. His hair was natural, just the way she liked it, and he looked as if he was having a blast.

❄  _"You lot are so annoying!" Jody complained, slamming her locker door shut. Aliyah and Beth exchanged amused glances. "There's nothing going on between me and Tyler! We're just mates and besides, I haven't even known him that long!"_

_"Who cares?" Beth asked, placing a hand on her hip. "Brad's known Hannah even less and they're already getting serious! The whole school already talks about you two, so you might as well make it come true..."_

_"I care!" Jody retorted, close to tearing her hair out. "You guys don't get it! My mum's a deadbeat and my only living brother's been in prison since I was a kid_ _but Tyler's got these amazing parents who are always there for him!"_

_"What has that got to do with anything?" Aliyah questioned, waving flirtatiously at one of the boys who walked past them in the corridor. "You can't keep feeling sorry for yourself, Jody. It'll get you nowhere in life."_

_Jody was taken aback by the sheer apathy in her friend's voice. This was a dream, she knew that by now, especially after last night, but she didn't want to stand here and listen to the insensitive comments any longer, even though she knew they were probably right. She felt sorry for herself an awful lot, didn't she, primarily when it came to the men in her life?_

_Before she could run away this time, her surroundings morphed and the Science corridor was replaced by the bus stop outside Ashdene Ridge. She was standing next to the stop, anxiously eyeing up the kids outside the house while Tyler checked out the timetable._

_"Are you ever going to invite me inside?" he asked, making her tear her eyes away from Taz, Finn and Jay. "We've been mates since my family moved here but I still haven't met yours."_

_"They're not my family," she said nervously, wringing her hands together. She suddenly felt bad as soon as the words left her mouth. If they weren't her family, who was? "I mean, they're the closest I'm going to get to one, but they're not my blood family, not like your parents are to you."_

_"I know that," he stated, smiling small. "I just wanted to meet them before_ — _" He abruptly cut himself off, avoiding her eyes. Before what? "There's something I've been meaning to ask you," he continued hesitantly, as if he'd heard her question, "_ _I mean, I think you already know, but I like you."_

 _Her stomach did a somersault and she willed herself to stay calm. The real Tyler would never say something like this to her, certainly not of his own accord, so she had to ask, "As_ more _than a friend?"_

 _"Well, obviously!" he answered, but he sounded so happy that his sass didn't piss her off like it usually would've done. "So, do you wanna go and see that movie with me this weekend, just the two of us?"_ ❄

"Yes!" she mumbled deliriously, half asleep. She didn't even care that she had no idea what film he was referring to. "Yes..."

.:. QK .:.

《 _"She did it because of me!" Tyler cried hysterically in a pre-pubescent voice, looking so much younger than he had in a long time. His hair was half the size she was used to seeing it. "I know she did! It's because I got fostered!"_

_"Don't be silly," she admonished, sitting next to him on the edge of his bed. "She told you she wouldn't mind if you got fostered as long as you didn't get adopted, remember?"_

_"Yeah, but she didn't mean it! She probably wasn't even taking her pills properly!"_

_She sighed. "Look, Tyler, Mrs Underwood is worried about you. Your mum was an adult. She's responsible for her own actions, whether she felt bad about you getting fostered or not..._ None of this _is your fault; you're only eleven."_

_He sniffed, staring at her through teary eyes. "Why do you sound like a grown-up?" Uh-oh. She was supposed to be eleven here, not fifteen, but she couldn't control what came out of her mouth._

_Feeling awkward, even though it was a dream, she shrugged casually in response. "Dunno."_

_He let out a noise that sounded like a half sob half laugh before slinging an arm around her. "I wish you were here more. My foster parents are great but it's so quiet sometimes."_

_"Ask them to foster more kids," she suggested. "Harry and the new kid at the home, Finn, were foster brothers. You could have one as well."_

_"How about a sister?" asked a lady she recognised as Mrs Underwood_ _,_ _appearing out of nowhere._

《  _"I want to move back to Ashdene Ridge," Jody announced, avoiding the gaze of the boy across the dining table._

_"But why, sweetheart?" Mrs Underwood inquired from the head of the table, sounding confused and... hurt. "You've been with us for four years now, almost as long as Tyler has."_

_Tyler scoffed. "Just let her go, Mum! She's probably been talking to Denise again!"_

_Jody scowled at him as her foster mother regarded her with concern._ _"Is that true, Jody?"_

_"Of course not?!" she snapped, feeling irritated for some reason. "I hate her!"_

_Mrs Underwood paused and sat back, her eyes darting between the pair of them. "Have you two fallen out again? I know I've been working late these last few days but that doesn't mean you two can start doing whatever you want in my absence."_

_All of a sudden, blood rushed to Jody's cheeks and she looked away but not before catching a glimpse of Tyler to see that he appeared to be equally abashed._

_"Nothing happened in your absence, Gloria," she said softly, bowing her head._ _"The truth is that this just isn't working for me anymore."_

 _"You two used to get along so well when you were younger," Gloria lamented aloud. "Are you sure about this? You'll be sixteen soon; they might put you straight into a semi-independent flat." Jody pursed her lips together, not daring to answer. Her foster mother sighed. "_ _Won't you at least wait until Martin gets back from his business trip before making your final decision? You know you've always been the daughter he's never had."_

_"Yeah, sure," she replied, her voice trembling. He was the dad she'd never had as well._

《  _"You don't have to leave!" Tyler exclaimed, throwing his arms out. He and Jody were standing in her bedroom at Ashdene Ridge but the view outside the window indicated that this was Gloria's house._

_"Really?" she croaked in a pathetic attempt to yell. "Didn't you hear Gloria the other day?!" He gave her a blank look, drawing a frustrated snarl from her. "I'm the daughter they've never had! How are they going to feel when they find out what their daughter and son have been doing behind their backs!"_

_"Jeez, not so loud!" he warned in a panicked voice before running to the doorway and peering out of it._

_"What are you doing?!" she shouted as he closed the door, her heart thundering in her chest. "You shouldn't even be in here!"_

_"Why not? I thought I was your_ brother _!"_

 _"You're_ supposed _to be!"_

_"But I'm not! You're not even their daughter!"_

_She laughed hollowly, her heart lurching painfully, and dropped down onto her bed. "But you're their son, aren't you? It'll break their hearts if they find out that we nearly_ — _" She stopped herself, unable to finish the statement._

_"But we didn't," he said quietly, sitting his uninvited behind down next to her on the edge of the bed. "It was just a kiss, Jodes. It didn't even mean anything to you anyway so why are you getting so worked up about it?"_

_"As if it meant anything to you an' all," she sniped bitterly. "You were just trying to get a girl into your bed—you didn't care who_."

_He didn't respond and after a long stretch of silence, she turned her head in his direction to see that he had a dead serious expression on his face. She blinked, her mouth becoming dry, and she scrambled to gather her thoughts. Heck, what thoughts? This wasn't even real._

_"I was going to ask you to the prom that night," he confessed, and if she wasn't already speechless, he would've struck her so. He turned to face her, mirroring her exactly, the hurt shining in his eyes. "But I guess you wouldn't want to go with your perv brother."_ 》

"But I would!" she shouted, groggily lifting her head and opening her eyes to see her entire Geography class staring back at her.

"Detention after school, Jody Gray!" the teacher declared harshly, before turning back to the whiteboard. She rolled her eyes.

Why the hell did she take Geography anyway? It only reminded her of all the places she'd never been. Oh, there she went again, feeling sorry for herself just like dream Aliyah had pointed out.

.:. QK .:.

Jody clucked her tongue as she sat inside the Year Lead's office, trying not to crack under her scrutinising gaze. Bill sat in the chair to her right, lazily chewing gum and clearly thinking that because the Year Lead couldn't see under the table, she couldn't tell that he was secretly on his phone. Apparently, he was in detention because he hadn't handed in three pieces of homework in a row.

Five minutes into the detention, the door softly clicked open and the cruel woman from the Absence office popped in. "Got another one for you; absent on Friday and only came in after lunch today but no doctor's note to prove his four-day illness."

"Thank you," the Year Lead replied, and in walked, or rather stumbled, Tyler, looking like he was at death's door.

Jody leapt up from her seat as soon as the Absence office lady closed the door, grabbing Tyler by the arm and guiding him to the seat on her left. As he smiled weakly at her in gratitude and the Year Lead primly cleared her throat, she boiled in anger, wondering how Mike and May-Li could've sent him to school in such a state and how the staff couldn't see that he was suffering from severe jetlag. The flight had been at least fifteen hours, for God's sake; he'd spent at least thirty hours within the space of four days in the air!

"Miss Gray, you may let go of Mr Lewis' arm now," the Year Lead stated as if she was making a suggestion but Jody knew that she was really giving an order.

She begrudgingly let go of his arm, wanting nothing more than to hug him and ensure that he got some well-deserved sleep. She half wondered whether this was another dream and yet another version of Tyler but banished the thoughts from her mind. What did it matter? Whether due to their life circumstances or fate, she loved him to distraction and maybe a part of her always would. She couldn't change it, so why even try?

Bill whistled from her right, drawing the attention of everyone else in the small room. "Guess I now know why it didn't work out between you and my sister, eh, mate?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Just a few things to note about the dreams, in case they weren't clear: the first and second dream sequences belong to same 'universe' wherein Brandon is the one who's lived with Jody since age 9 and Tyler's the one she meets during Year Ten, though at school instead of the gym, and the third sequence takes place in a world where Mrs Underwood from the Series 3 premiere and her husband foster Tyler and later adopt him (after Sally overdoses on her meds). Personally, I believe that when something's supposed to happen in your life, it'll happen by hook or by crook. In this case, Jody was always meant to meet Tyler and fall for him and that's what happened. Since Jody would've died in the Series 4 finale if Tyler hadn't rescued her, I made it so that Kingsley was never released from prison in the Brandon/Tyler switched universe.**
> 
> **Okay, so, believe it or not, but I had a dream two nights ago where I was watching a non-existent episode of TDG. It had to be an alternate S6/S7A episode because Ryan was still in care but it consisted of Charlie and Bird becoming a secret couple, and Ryan actually caring about Candi-Rose being upset and deciding to set her up with Chloe. I mean, no offence to Bird/Charlie and Candi-Rose/Chloe shippers (do such shippers exist, lol?) but I have never considered these two pairings (the former doesn't sound legal). I've written two fanfics based on dreams before (one was crackfic, one was serious) so if anyone wants to use this dream and spin it into an amazing fic, please go ahead. I did watch Bird's Song that day so I guess Bird, Candi-Rose and Charlie were subconsciously playing on my mind when I drifted off to sleep.**  
>     
>  **Last night, I had another TDG dream wherein Candi-Rose had Ryan's baby. I'm pretty sure they were still teenagers and still living at Ashdene Ridge at the time. I don't think I was even watching this one in an episode; I think I was present at the scene as a character or part of the hospital staff. The conception (lol, word choice) of weird pairings in my dreams continue. Once again, no offence to any possible shippers out there.**


	27. Chapter 27

Jody rested her head against the cool back of the bathtub, thinking over Brandon's offer of going to Florida with his family once more. A few years back, she would've jumped at the chance to go to America let alone Florida, the site of the famed theme park she'd envied her childhood friend for going to all those years ago. Why did she have to think about it at all? She should've said yes as soon as Brandon had asked. It wasn't as if Mike and May-Li were going to stop her; after all, they (along with his social worker) had allowed Tyler to go to Vegas just last week. She didn't even have to worry about contributing to the price of her ticket; Brandon's parents were going to pay for everything. She closed her eyes. She could picture it already: her, Brandon, his parents and his little sister all soaking up the sunlight as they hung out on a beach.

Suddenly, the vision, if it could be called such, morphed into one of her and Brandon standing outside a church in wedding attire before moving into a swanky house with a girl and boy who looked like them, respectively, and growing old together. Oh, hell no. She hurriedly sat up, her head having nearly slipped under the water, before wringing the water out of her drenched hair. Where had that silly idea come from, especially the bit about kids? Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined becoming a mother, not even to Tyler's children.

Tyler... What would he think of this offer of Brandon's? Would he be happy for her? Well, not fully happy, of course, never where Brandon was concerned, but enough to encourage her to accept it? A selfish part of her momentarily considered using the trip to force a jealous love confession out of Tyler but she dismissed it almost straight away. While she'd recently figured out that she would always be at least a little in love with him, their friendship was still more important to her than a romantic relationship. She wasn't going to risk it all for a few kisses here and there, no matter how much she wanted to at times; if things didn't work out, she'd lose her best friend. Keeping him as a friend and someone else as a boyfriend and eventual husband was the way to go. At least it had been, up until recently.

Lately, spending time with Brandon outside the gym had become a chore. They hadn't been on a real date in ages and honestly, she felt no desire to go on one, no matter what Candi-Rose drilled into her about the sheer  _work_  relationships required. What did Candi-Rose really know anyway? She'd never been in a relationship herself and couldn't even tell that Jody wasn't as interested in Brandon as she and Sasha thought. Whatever. Jody didn't need a pink-clad relationship guru to tell her that Brandon asking her to go away with his family meant he was becoming serious and that he'd eventually expect the entire package from her: kissing, sex, marriage and kids.

Jody's hands stilled as the stark realisation hit her: she didn't even fancy Brandon. She sighed, pulling the plug on the bathtub and watching the water disappear down the plughole. Deep down, she'd known for a while that she'd tricked herself into thinking she liked Brandon in that way but was only now allowing herself to consciously acknowledge it. The harsh truth was that she was just like her mother in using men to get what she wanted; Denise had dated Grant for expensive gifts and the opportunity to get married, whereas Jody had dated Brandon to move on from Tyler (and had failed). Going away to Florida with his family when she knew he would take it to mean that she was serious about him would only complete her journey to becoming exactly like the Jackson matriarch.

She rose from the now empty bathtub, finally knowing what she had to do despite not really wanting to. The selfish part of her didn't want to do right by Brandon, not when it meant letting go of her only safety net against a lifetime of loneliness. She liked him well enough and if she had to pick someone other than Tyler to settle down with, it'd have to be him, even if she'd never love him the way a wife was meant to love her husband. She shook her head. Maybe, one day, she'd find a guy to fill in the spot in her life she couldn't give to Tyler, preferably one who also wanted someone they could never have, but that person wasn't Brandon and never had been.

She needed to let him go.

.:. QK .:.

Ironically, she ended up choosing the park near Gray's house to meet Brandon for the last time as his girlfriend. How fitting that she was about to dump her boyfriend mere roads away from the residence of the man who'd dumped her, albeit in a very different way, for another woman and her daughter. God, seeing Brandon at the gym afterwards was going to be painfully awkward and the daunting thought was almost enough to make her change her mind but she clenched her fists, banishing the weak worries from her mind. Even if she didn't break up with him today, they'd eventually break up one day and she'd still have to face him at the gym. Her resolve strengthened when she saw her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend approach her out of the corner of her eye.

It was time.

"Hey," Brandon chirped, sitting on the kiddie swing next to the one she was occupying. A few young parents glared at them, no doubt wanting the swings free for their tots, but she took no notice.

"Hi," she replied nervously, tightly gripping the metal chains of the swing. How did a girl go about breaking up with a decent guy? What was she meant to say? A straight-up 'I wanna break up' or the cliche 'it's not you, it's me'? Both options just sounded wrong, especially as a starting point. Instead, she decided to go for a casual, "How are you doing?"

"Good," he answered, staring straight ahead with a subdued smile on his face. Uh-oh. Was he already down about something? Would dumping him right now be cruel? "You've decided not to come away with us, haven't you?"

"Yeah," she responded sheepishly, only half surprised that he'd guessed correctly. After all, the reticence was probably painted all over her face. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "No, it's okay... I kind of got the idea that you weren't interested back when I asked you but I hoped you'd change your mind." He paused, visibly mulling something over, before turning to look at her with sad eyes. "Are you not interested in Florida or are you just not interested in me?"

This was it. He was even giving her an opening. How much better could it get? "I do like you, Brandon," she admitted sincerely, forcing herself to maintain eye contact with him. "It's just, when you asked me to Florida, I—"

"Come on, Jody, something was off between us way before that," he interjected seriously. For the first time since she'd met him, he wasn't even trying to smile, and she felt awful for being the one to make that happen. "Asking you to go on holiday with me and my family just confirmed it. I just don't understand why. Was it something I did?"

"No!" she exclaimed, her voice strained. How odd: she strangely felt emotional. "You're the nicest, sweetest boy I've ever met, and I don't just say that to anyone. I really mean it."

"But?" Ah, the inevitable 'but'.

She sighed. "But... nothing. I can't explain it."

She was lying through her teeth at this point but what the hell was she supposed to say? That she'd been stringing him along since the beginning and only now felt bad about it? Or that she'd only dated him because someone else, the boy he saw as her big brother, had turned her down mere minutes before she'd decided to go out with him?

"Is there someone else?" he asked after a beat. She froze. Did he somehow already know about her and Tyler? Had he always known or had someone at the house clued him in when she wasn't looking? She'd been very careful not to leave him alone with the troublemakers (Floss, Ryan, and Jay) whenever he visited but had she come up short somewhere?

"Uhhh," she let out dumbly, racking her brain for something to say but it was as futile as throwing a stone into an empty well: no words came out.

"Right, I get it," he said, smiling sadly.

Oh God, what did he think of her? That stupid noise she'd let out had probably given him the idea that she'd been cheating on him or something. To be fair, she kind of had, but only in the emotional sense; it wasn't like she'd gone as far as kissing Tyler or anything like that.

"I'm not cheating!" she blurted out, drawing disgusted looks from some of the young parents around her and patronising, almost amused glances from a few others.

Brandon blinked. "I didn't say you were."

She closed her eyes, wishing a hole would open up in the ground and swallow her whole. She probably seemed like even more of a bitch to him now that she'd accused him of accusing her. "It's complicated"—she opened her eyes, looking at him again—"I sort of already liked someone else before you asked me out."

He raised an eyebrow. "Sort of?"

"Yeah..." she trailed off, realising how flakey that sounded. "I mean, I liked him but I decided to forget about him when you asked me out; I never had a chance with him anyway. I know how that sounds but I didn't mean to  _use_  you. You just happened to be the first one to ask me out after  _everything_." The first one ever, actually, but he didn't need to know that.

"I think I understand," he stated, "You never really forgot about him and now that you do have a chance with him, you want to grab it with both hands."

"That's not why," she insisted shakily. "I  _still_  don't have a chance with him. This"—she gestured between them—"has nothing to do with him. I just think that I'm not the right girl for you."

"Or that I'm not the right guy for you."

Not having the heart to say it, she just nodded mutely. Initiating a break-up was more emotionally draining than she'd expected it to be; she'd always thought that the only person who experienced pain during a break-up was the dumpee. Maybe she would've felt better about the entire thing if Brandon had been a total arse but he wasn't and this was possibly one of the most difficult things she'd ever had to do next to ignoring her family members.

Shifting uncomfortably on the swing, she said, "I'm sorry I didn't say something earlier; I didn't want you to hate me."

"I don't hate you," he assured kindly. "I don't think I could ever hate you and, actually, I still want to be friends."

She smiled weakly. Being friends with an ex was easier said than done and she had a suspect feeling that he'd come to understand that the next time they saw each other but she really hoped they could work it out, if only so that they could continue attending the same gym without having to actively avoid each other. As he made his excuses and pressed a final kiss to her cheek before leaving, she sat numbly on the swing, feeling as if she'd reached another sad milestone in her life.

.:. QK .:.

Over the next couple of days, Jody kept her break-up to herself, artfully changing the subject whenever Brandon was brought up in conversation but when it came time for her to go the gym for the first time since said break-up, she found herself in dire need of female advice. The internet was usually a great source of information but she didn't trust it when it came to dealing with sensitive issues such as this. With her mind made up, she went to Candi-Rose's room only to find Chloe and Ryan huddled together near the former's bed, sharing a pair of earphones and staring at a phone screen.

"Yeah?" Ryan prompted rudely after she knocked, looking at her as if she was the biggest inconvenience known to man.

"I was looking for Candi-Rose," she said, appealing directly to Chloe. "Do you know where she is?"

Ryan rolled his eyes as his sister answered, "I think she's gone out with Bird. She's got this whole list of things she wants to buy for Mike's wedding and now that we've got less than a week to go, she's gone a little nuts."

"Better him than me," Ryan muttered, and Jody took that as her cue to leave.

Walking out of the bedroom, down the narrow hallway and into the lounge, she wondered what to do now that Candi-Rose wasn't available when she walked straight into Tyler. She pulled back and peered up at him, embarrassed about wandering around in a zombie-like state.

"Woah, watch where you're going!" he scolded, though there was no actual heat behind his words. "What's up? You look worried."

She licked her lips, contemplating whether to tell him about the break-up or not. Now that there was no longer a living obstacle (she hated to refer to Brandon as such but she couldn't help it) between them, she had no idea how to behave around him. A lot of the time, she felt like doing something really stupid like grabbing his hand or sitting really close to him like she used to when they were younger but she managed to stop herself. After all, she didn't want to freak him out; just because he had feelings for her, it didn't mean he was interested in being more than friends, and she didn't quite have the guts to make another move on him lest he rejected her yet again. Besides, she didn't think she was ready for another relationship just yet, especially one where she had a lot to lose.

"Jody!" Tyler singsonged, waving his hand in front of her face. She playfully swatted it away, laughter bubbling to her lips as he mock hissed about the supposed pain. "So, you gonna tell me what's going on? Have you got to walk to the gym or something?"

"No; May-Li's giving me a lift in, like, half an hour," she replied, noticing Jay and Floss lurking around in the lobby. Oh, there was no way she was going to risk letting the latter catch wind of her break-up. The girl practically worshipped that Jyler wedding portrait she'd so proudly painted.

Jody refocused her gaze on Tyler, tipping her head in the general direction of the stairs. He followed her without question as she led him up to the attic, a place Floss couldn't get to without giving herself away; the stairs were notoriously squeaky.

"Has Luke done something?" he asked, frowning. "Don't tell me he's cancelled again."

Luke hadn't contacted Simon since last week and had pretty much been out of sight and out of mind. "No, nothing like that. I saw him when you were in Vegas anyway."

He relaxed, clearly relieved, and sat down on one of the two sofas situated opposite each other at the back of the attic. She'd given up trying to keep track of what Mike and May-Li kept up here; the furniture seemed to change every other week. "So?"

"I broke up with Brandon," she stated plainly, carefully watching his reaction.

Sure enough, an undisputed hint of something flashed through his eyes as quick as lightning. "Oh," he uttered in a high pitched voice, ducking his head. "Umm, why?"

Really? That was all he had to say?  _Why_? Maybe it'd been foolish of her but she'd hoped for some sort of sign that he was pleased by her actions, even though she hadn't broken up with Brandon  _for_  him.

"It just... didn't work out," she answered truthfully, sitting down right in the middle of the other sofa. "Today's the first time I'm seeing him since the break-up."

He instantly leaned forward, his eyebrows knotting together in confusion. "Wait. When exactly did you break up with him?"

"Sunday."

His eyebrows nearly flew up into his hairline, and he sat back again. "So you're nervous about seeing him again, is that it?" He licked his lip, looking almost shy as he regarded her with half-lidded eyes. "Do you regret it?"

"No," she replied firmly, a smile tugging at her lips. "He wasn't right for me at all. I think I always knew that"—she held his gaze—"but I pushed on because..." Because you gave me no choice, she wanted to say, but she didn't want to start a fight, not when they'd been getting along so well recently. "Anyway, I just want to be able to see him at the gym without feeling guilty or something."

Just then, she spotted a slither of a smile on his face: the corners of his lips twitched ever so slightly. She pressed her own lips together tightly in an effort to prevent herself from smiling. Even though she'd never had feelings for him, smiling while talking about breaking up with Brandon seemed cold.

"Well, I don't think you should worry about it too much," he finally spoke, a ghost of a grin gracing his face. Oh God, he truly was awful at hiding his emotions. He resembled the cheeky youngster who'd tried to look sorry after splatting Elektra in the face with a water balloon. At least some things besides the chores never changed around here. "I mean, you did tell him why you were breaking up with him, right?"

"Yeah," she responded before blowing out her cheeks. "What was it like when you broke things off with Hannah? You two weren't awkward at all when we ran into her at the pictures."

He actually chuckled. "Things were never serious between us. I just didn't ask her out on a third date and she got the message. She's cool like that."

"Cool like me?" she questioned, irrational jealousy churning in her gut.

"No, not as cool as you," he answered smoothly, winking, and most of the tension in the room evaporated just then. "I've never met a girl cooler than you."

She finally cracked a smile, unable to help herself. She'd missed flirty, carefree Tyler more than she'd initially realised. Why hadn't she broken up with Brandon sooner? She would've traded all of the fancy dates in the world for just one more moment like this during the last six months of pain and confusion.

As she sat there and gave Tyler the eye, the truth hit her in the face like a ton of bricks: she never wanted to be in a meaningless relationship again. She didn't want to be like her mother, settling for any old guy, even one as nice as Grant, just to gain stability in life and a ring on her finger. When she married someone, she wanted it to be forever, and she wasn't going to get that from some guy she had no real, tangible feelings for.

When she married, she'd marry someone she loved, and right now, that was the boy sitting right in front of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Eek, those last paragraphs are as cheesy af and I'll probably come back and edit them a million times but the general theme/idea of it will remain the same because by the end of No Escaping, Jody had pretty much decided to marry Tyler. Some of you might be thinking 'no way, Jody wouldn't think like that, she ain't a girly girl' but the evidence is right there in the episode! I know it's a little different in this chapter in that she's basically thinking about marrying him without him confessing his feelings first but, honestly, if you've really been reading this, you'll know that she already knows how he feels about her.**
> 
> **Speaking of No Escaping, that's the next episode in my TDG marathon. Regarding Faker, which my brothers and I watched a couple of days ago, can I just say that I was pissed off when I saw comments claiming that Kamal was acting not-brotherly with his sister? I've seen men pick their cute little grandmas up and spin them around like that. Not too weird a thing to do to your little sister either. Also, I call my brothers babe/baby (they are literally my babies) as well. Totally normal for me and no one besides my immature and dirty minded young cousin has ever batted an eyelid at it, and even he's over it now.**


	28. Chapter 28

After a long morning of drama, Jody yawned as she collapsed on her bed, proceeding to literally let her hair down. As her unbound locks spilt over her shoulders, she eyed the bouquet on her bedside and grinned uncontrollably. Back in May, when she'd brooded over the Royal Wedding, she never would've imagined trying to catch the bouquet let alone being inexplicably happy about it. Had she really changed so much since then? She must've, at least a little, because when Alex had told her what Ryan had said to Mike about how most marriages 'ended in divorce anyway', she'd been appalled, even though she'd been of a similar mindset seven months ago. She hadn't been completely off the mark, though; the percentage of English marriages that ended in divorce fell somewhere between forty and fifty per cent. Not as high as Ryan had suggested, but perhaps a little too high for Candi-Rose to squeal about every single marriage she ever heard of.

Thinking of Candi-Rose, she remembered that she had to return her fancy hair scrunchie to her. While she'd picked her outfit herself, a one piece that made her feel like an adult rather than a girl who looked way too young for her age, Candi-Rose had directed her in the hair department. Begrudgingly getting off her bed, she picked the hair scrunchie up and went downstairs. The lounge was particularly packed with numerous former Elm Tree House residents, most of whom she didn't even know, and as she passed the pool table occupied by some of the boys she  _did_  know, she flashed Tyler a smile.

She heard endless streams of giggles as soon as she opened the door connecting the lounge to Candi-Rose and Chloe's hallway, and was surprised to see that a lot of the female guests, including Tracy, were hanging around in the bedroom at the end of said hallway. She hated to admit it but she felt kind of jealous seeing Tracy joke around with some of the current residents; after all, she was the only current female resident Tracy had actually known prior to the wedding.

"Oh, hi Jody!" Chloe greeted from where she was sitting with Carmen and Candi-Rose who seemed to be getting on like a house on fire.

"Hi," she responded, sauntering into the room. One glance around the vicinity told her that there were easily about fifteen to twenty girls/women scattered around, chatting amongst themselves in small groups. "I just came to return this," she said, waving the hair scrunchie around before setting it down on Candi-Rose's dresser.

Since nearly every inch of both beds was taken up in some form or the other, she sat down on the chair in front of the dresser, coming face to face with her own reflection. Ever since she and the other girls had gone shopping for wedding outfits, she'd started playing around with the idea of getting more than just the usual trim over the Christmas holidays; she'd read in one of Candi-Rose's magazines that she had to push herself out of her comfort zone every once in a while and hadn't been able to get the idea out of her head since. She'd already gone and bought a pink jacket—to Candi-Rose's delight—so what was a haircut?

"That was a nice catch, Jody," Kazima commented, interrupting her thoughts.

"Yeah, too nice," Floss complained loudly from out of Jody's line of sight. "I wanted to catch it. Who knows when I'll next attend a wedding."

"Maybe when you're actually old enough to be the next one to get married," Carmen piped up, laughing. "Not that you should rush down the altar just yet, Jody, not before me!"

Jody scoffed, though not with any actual scorn. "Yeah, as if! I'm not old yet!"

Normally, she would've hated sitting with such a large congregation of girls, especially giggling ones, but these girls/young women weren't a bunch of strangers. They were family. It was an odd thought but it was true; she'd shared a roof with each and every one of these girls (besides Tracy, of course) at one point, and being in this room with them felt like reuniting with her sisters at their dad's wedding. Oh God, did she feel cheesy right now.

"What a day, eh?" Tee spoke up. "A jilted groom, a wedding and a baby, all at once."

"And a death," Sasha added, walking into the room. Jody turned to look at her, confused. "Charlie found out that Henry died this morning. May-Li named her baby after him... and Joseph."

"Joseph?" Taz exclaimed. "Unfair!"

Jody turned back to the mirror in shock. Charlie's granddad had died? How awful. "Is she okay?" she questioned, swallowing deeply. If losing her deadbeat, toxic mother had been hard for her, she could only imagine how hard it was to lose a loving grandfather.

"She's alright, she just needs some time on her own. I've just left her in her room," Sasha answered before jumping up on the bed and lodging herself into a spot near Jody that only she could fit in. "So, did Brandon dump you or did you dump him?"

Jody whipped her head towards Sasha fast, her eyes flitting to Candi-Rose and Floss before settling on her small friend. "Shh!" she hissed. "Do you want everyone to hear you?!" Sasha just smirked, and Jody sighed. "How do you know about that anyway?"

"I didn't, but thanks for telling me." She groaned. How had she fallen for that one? "I knew something was up as soon as I noticed you and Tyler gazing at each other throughout the whole wedding."

What the hell?! She did not  _gaze_ at Tyler!

"Oh, are you talking about Jody and Brandon's break-up?" Floss suddenly asked, and Jody just closed her eyes in anticipation. She didn't even want to know how the younger girl knew. "That's old news. Jody and Tyler, though... Who wants to see the wedding portrait I did of them in the summer?!"

A surprising number of 'me's went around the room and Jody's eyes snapped open. To be honest, she felt kind of betrayed that even the older ones like Elektra and Faith were interested. Floss excitedly told everyone to wait before bounding down the hallway, and Jody looked away from everyone, only for Tracy to speak up.

"You and Tyler? Aww!"

"Oh, not you too!" Jody moaned, blushing like a bride.  _Like a bride._  Oh, the irony.

"What?! You two were two peas in a pod, right from the beginning; those first few days, he got through to you in a way the other kids didn't, and I knew that you two were going to be best friends right then and there. But a couple? That's so cute!"

"Were you there when they first met, Tracy?" Sasha implored deviously, wagging her eyebrows at Jody who had just been about to bring Tracy's boyfriend up as a change of subject. "Was it love at first sight?"

"First bite, more like," Elektra interjected, smirking when some of the residents gave her puzzled looks. "She straight up bit him the day she moved into Elm Tree House!"

As a few gasps and giggles went around the room, Jody scratched her neck, wondering what to say. It wasn't as if they were all wrong. She couldn't exactly denounce their fangirling and shipping like she used to, not when it was different now. Her eyes followed Floss as she returned with the framed painting in tow, proudly holding it up for everyone to see. She and Tyler still weren't together like everyone so obviously thought they were but they weren't just friends either, even though neither had explicitly voiced their feelings yet. What did that make them, then? More than friends but less than lovers?

"I always told you that Jyler would win out, Sasha," Candi-Rose boasted. "Isn't it great?!"

Floss let out a noise of disbelief. "Excuse me, you gave up on Jyler as soon as Jandon came along!"

Jody fondly rolled her eyes at Sasha, sensing a fight coming on. "Wanna go see what the boys are up to?"

Sasha didn't even hesitate. "Yeah."

.:. QK .:.

By the time the clock struck three, the majority of the guests had left and the residents were ordered by Dee, the relief care worker, to clear everything up. With Mike away on his honeymoon and May-Li on maternity leave, they were all going to be stuck with her and May-Li's replacement, someone they hadn't yet met, for at least two weeks, which meant only one thing: this Christmas was going to be the worst yet, maybe even more so than last year's. No, she wasn't being fair; this was hardly the same as being faced with eviction. At least this time, no one would be threatening to separate them all.

As she gathered the bunting up and stuffed it into a cardboard box, Kazima and Bailey shouted that they were leaving for the airport. She yelled an 'alright' back, forcing herself to go upstairs before she could abandon her work and run outside to see the two of them off like she wanted to. Carefully opening the attic door, she was about to dump the cardboard box and run back downstairs to get the other decor when she spotted a figure hunched over on the floor. For a brief moment, she felt like she was in a horror movie but then she noticed the awful jumper the figure was wearing and identified the culprit right away.

"Joseph?" she called quietly, setting the box down and drawing closer to him. "Why are you hiding away up here? You're meant to be downstairs helping the rest of us clear up."

"I suppose so," he replied flatly. "But I don't feel like it."

Jody felt her eyebrows fly up into her hairline as she sat next to him. " _You_  don't feel like it? None of us do! Well, except Charlie maybe..."

He frowned at her, giving her pause. She'd never seen him like this before. Heck, he'd always been the only kid she'd seen walk through the doors of Ashdene Ridge and adjust to the life here without any major problems. He was also one of the only ones who'd never once expressed any bitterness about being in care, at least not in front of her.

"I wish Mike or May-Li were here," he said, blowing out his cheeks.

"Too right; Dee's already getting on my nerves and we don't even know what the other one's gonna be like!"

He rested his face against his palm, sighing. "That's not what I meant. I wish they were here so they could give me some advice."

Oh. Now she felt embarrassed about her bitch-rant. "Advice on what?" He didn't answer, kind of offending her. Did he not trust her or something? She couldn't think why. "Joseph, you can  _tell_  me."

"Do you think I did the right thing by turning John and Jacinda down?" he asked bluntly, leaning back against a dusty shelf.

"Yeah, of course," she replied without hesitation. Where was this coming from? He'd turned those two down two months ago. "You weren't ready. Why do you ask?"

"Well, they sent me back my pocket encyclopedia today and Taz made a comment about how nice it was of them to do that, and it made me feel guilty about turning them down for no good reason." She blinked. Returning the encyclopedia wasn't 'nice', it was just decent. What else were they going to do with it? Sell it? "I could've just told them that I don't like sports; they could've got me some science apparatus instead. And, yes, I wasn't ready to leave this place but is anyone ever really ready?"

Probably not. How many people had she seen leave Ashdene Ridge teary-eyed and absolutely terrified of what awaited them in the future? Too many to count. Even Bailey had shed a tear upon getting into Mike's car for the last time. Seeing everyone at the wedding today had made her realise just how long she'd been in care; she'd seen at least twenty people leave, and more than half of them had arrived after her.

"I don't think so," she answered. "But that doesn't mean you made the wrong decision. You would've been a right miserable tool if you'd moved in with them back then."

"Well, what about now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I was talking to Archie and Dexter today and after hearing how happy they are with their current situations, I realised that I might be as ready as I'll ever be."

She didn't know what to say. It sounded an awful lot like Joseph was just saying that because he felt like he'd been left behind by his friends or something. She understood that feeling all too well so she got where he was coming from but he was moving much too fast.

"Are you sure you're not just doing this because..."

"Because my best friend's in foster care?" he finished, looking unimpressed. "No. If it was like that, I would've accepted John and Jacinda the first time around because Archie got fostered before that."

Well, that was that then. "If you say so."

He suddenly turned to her, an excited expression on his face. "Do you think I could be with John and Jacinda by Christmas?"

How was she meant to know? Could relief care workers even arrange fostering placements without the Head Care Worker's approval? "Wait, what happened to talking to Mike and May-Li?"

"Oh, I can just call them if I need to," he said dismissively, rising to his feet. "I just needed someone mature to talk to and here you were. Thanks for that!"

"You're welcome, I guess?"

By the time she was done speaking, he'd already disappeared, leaving her to sit there on the attic floor, unable to decide whether being called 'mature' was a compliment or an insult.

.:. QK .:.

The next morning passed by without consequence, the only significant thing being that Sam was once again May-Li's replacement, to the relief of Jody and the other residents who knew him well, but that all changed when Joseph entered the lounge and collapsed on the sofa. Jody, who'd retracted her legs and had thereby narrowly avoided having them crushed by him, looked up from the book she was reading to take in his dishevelled state.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, turning to the next page. She was trying to get through the book quickly before Tyler could get back from lunch with his mum and stepdad and unwittingly spoil it for her.

"John and Jacinda said no," Joseph replied miserably. She sighed and closed the book, knowing her conscience wouldn't allow her to just sit there and continue reading when there was a distressed kid right in front of her. "They are, in my social worker's words, no longer considering fostering."

"Do you know why?" she asked, putting her book down. Since their talk the prior day, the possibility of the couple not wanting to foster him had not once crossed her mind. She'd thought the only thing to put a wrench in his new life would've been Mike's absence. "Did they adopt some other kid?"

"Does it matter?" he questioned in return, slumping his shoulders. "The point is that they don't want me."

"They don't want anyone," she corrected, biting her lip.

What else could she say? He'd already reached the unofficial cut-off age for a good chance of getting out of residential care; the likelihood of getting fostered, let alone adopted, after becoming twelve was barely above zero. Even then, as Mike, May-Li, Simon and her patronising cowbag of an IRO had all told her, teens only tended to get taken in by someone who'd known them a long time like Tracy and her adoptive mum (apparently, there had been a dad, once, but he'd walked out not long after the adoption had gone through).

"It took me years just to get matched with John and Jacinda," he stated gravely, seemingly understanding that he didn't have another chance. Well, he'd always been smart. "How long will it take me to meet another pair?"

She shrugged rather unhelpfully, but the truth was that she couldn't help him in any way, shape or form other than lending an ear to him, and she wasn't inclined to optimistically lie to him. "Who knows?"

A phone pinged just then, and she scrambled to see if Tyler had messaged her—she'd asked him to buy her an energy drink on the way back because Dee had only bought the dreaded squash Joseph so liked—but soon realised it wasn't her phone that had gone off at all.

"Oh, it's Archie," Joseph said in a somewhat surprised tone, scrolling through something on his phone. "His foster parents want to know if I'd like to join them for a movie tonight. It's..."

Jody blocked him out as something occurred to her just then, and despite the voice in her head telling her not to get involved in matters that didn't concern her, a plan began to take root in her mind. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"I just told you. The movie they picked isn't really—"

"Joseph," she interrupted sharply, fixing him with a look. "Do you want to get fostered or not?"

He looked back at her in confusion. "I do but what's that got to do with—"

"Everything," she responded. "Just trust me on this one, yeah?"

"I don't really—"

She narrowed her eyes. "Joseph."

"Alright," he relented, appearing to be a little scared. "I'll go."

"Good." She smiled as he got up and literally ran out of the room, and Tyler walked in a second later, a puzzled expression on his face.

"What's up with Joseph?"

"Nothing," she answered, catching the drink he threw at her. "Thanks."

She had a rough idea of what to do but how was she going to implement it, especially with Dee hovering around all day?

"Oh no, I  _know_  that look!" Tyler exclaimed, eyeing her in concern as she opened the bottle. "What are you up to, Jodes?"

"It's a good thing," she assured, taking a sip. "I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I rewatched the last two episodes of Series 6 in order to write this chapter and OMG it was such a feel-good finale. The whole hour made me so happy (since I knew Fiona was going to come back this time 'round) because Mike deserves happiness and so much more. I particularly liked Tracy's line about Mike getting married to show the YP, who've seen very few if any positive examples of marriage, that love can work, especially because my Jody was so cynical about the whole prospect of love and marriage until recently. Jyler acted so married, for lack of a better word, throughout the whole thing, from him asking her how he looked to them sitting/standing/dancing together in nearly all of their scenes, that I felt like a proud parent or something! And, aww, May-Li naming her baby after Henry and Joseph was so cute!**
> 
> **Let me just say that I believe that Joseph went to live with John and Jacinda after all. I mean, why else would they be mentioned in S6e23? However, since I like the idea of two friends besides some alternate versions of Jody and Tyler getting fostered by the same family, it won't be John and Jacinda.**


	29. Chapter 29

Thursday evening, after cooking her first dinner ever without any help from May-Li (who wasn't even available anyway), Jody crept into the lounge and closed the back doors behind her, not wanting to be around to hear the criticism from the other kids and Dee and Sam when they finally dug in. She finally understood why Charlie had temporarily decided to stop cooking after Bird's harsh revelation during Tyler's amnesty; knowing that twelve other people one lived with hated their cooking was downright disheartening. If she'd been in Charlie's place back then, she probably would've never picked a saucepan and spoon up again.

About twenty minutes later, the others started filing into the lounge, a few of them giving her funny looks but most of them not even glancing her way. Their behaviour struck her as odd. She'd expected something from Ryan, at the very least, but he hadn't even acknowledged her presence. Had he actually been serious about changing his ways during his speech at Mike's wedding? What a strange little world...

Not wanting to draw unnecessary attention to herself, she carefully stood up and walked out of the lounge and straight into the kitchen. A small serving had been left out on a plate with a glass of water, presumably for her, so she just sat down and started to eat the bland stuff. She could tell right off the bat that there was something missing but she didn't know what. This was pathetic. Even that soup Joseph and Chloe who were both younger than her made whenever someone fell ill tasted better than this.

Speaking of Joseph... he was about to get his happy ending soon, and it was mostly down to her, so at least she'd done something right these last few days.

"Jody," Tyler started, walking in through the main door with the household laptop in tow. She looked up from her half-full plate in mild intrigue as he sat next to her, and saw that there was a webpage full of personalised mugs open on the laptop. "Which one looks nicer?"

She took a long swig of water in an attempt to wash down her mouthful of food. In all honesty, she had little to no appetite. "Out of all of them? There's, like, twenty."

"No, just these two," he replied, pointing out two very different shaped mugs. There was no contest.

"Definitely the one on the left," she said truthfully, limply twisting her fork into her food. "Is it for your mum?"

"Yeah," he responded with a smile, adding the mug she'd chosen to the shopping basket. "There's this one picture of us on my phone that she really likes. I was thinking of surprising her with it."

"That's nice," she commented, remembering the time Sally had preferred to keep photos of a 'pre-care' Tyler around rather than his most recent photos. She'd briefly disliked her back then, regarding her as a selfish woman who was going to steal her best friend from her, but now that she knew first-hand how difficult it was accepting new people in a family member's life, she saw Sally's actions in a different light. "What are you getting for Kamal?"

He scrunched his face up. "I don't know. He doesn't really do Christmas, and what do you get a guy who already has everything anyway?"

"I'm sure your mum knows. Why don't you ask her?" she suggested, finally dropping her fork and pushing her plate away. "How did you eat this stuff? It tastes so weird."

The corners of his lips visibly twitched. "It's not  _that_  bad. It's just missing some salt. I sprinkled some on mine."

"Oh," she uttered, surprised. Salt. She hadn't wanted to add more in case she put too much in. How was she supposed to gauge how much salt was enough? Enough and too much tasted the same to her. "Good to know."

He smiled at her before pushing his chair back and standing up. "I've got to go and get Sam to put his credit card number in before he leaves for the night. He'll probably make a fuss."

"But it's better than asking Dee," she pointed out, looking back at him over her shoulder as he walked away.

"Exactly!" he called back before disappearing through the door.

After he left, she proceeded to bin what little was left on her plate and wash everything. Upon walking into the lounge, she felt as if she'd stumbled into ghost town. Her food hadn't been  _that_  bad, had it?

"What's got into you lot?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Joseph's gone a little bonkers," Floss answered from the floor in front of one of the sofas. "He impersonated Dee on the phone to his social worker and now he's been grounded."

"But Dee doesn't believe that he didn't have help from one of us girls," Chloe added. "She thinks there's no way he pretended to be a woman so she's grounded all of us as well until one of us owns up. She didn't even listen to our protests, she just went home!"

Jody sighed as Candi-Rose complained about not being able to go Christmas shopping that weekend. How had her plan suddenly gone awry? She'd broken into the office, located the number of Joseph's social worker and called said man to get him to ask Archie's foster parents (she'd gone into Archie's file to find their names) if they'd consider fostering Joseph. She'd also told him to tell them to come by with Archie on Saturday if they were interested so that they could talk things through with Joseph. Obviously, the social worker had called back for whatever reason and her scheme had been rumbled. That was a massive oversight on her part. How could she have made such a mistake?

"What's worse is that Joseph said he wants to cancel the visit anyway," Charlie spoke up, sounding somewhat hysterical. "So we've all been grounded for no reason!"

Huh? Surely, she didn't mean...? "What visit?"

"The visit he asked his social worker to arrange."

Jody refrained from letting her frustration show. There was no point letting the others know that they'd all been grounded because of her, and she was going to own up tomorrow anyway when Dee came in for her next shift. But why had Joseph ruined her hard work? Granted, he'd had nothing to do with the plan whatsoever but he wouldn't have turned down the visit without knowing what its purpose was. Dee would've told him when confronting him. She didn't get it. Didn't he want to get fostered, especially by his best friend's foster parents?

.:. QK .:.

Dee called in sick the next day and was replaced by yet another relief care worker—one who wore her long brown hair in a ponytail like Jody and had apparently met Candi-Rose before—so Jody wasn't able to own up first thing in the morning like she'd initially planned. She considered fessing up to Sam instead but by the time she spotted him in the office, she had to leave for school and so she had to let the other girls and Joseph remain grounded for another eight or so hours. On the walk to school, she wanted to have a quiet word with Joseph himself who was being ostracised by the other girls but between Tyler and Candi-Rose, she simply didn't get the chance.

When they got back home from school, however, Jody grabbed Joseph before he could protest and dragged him into the garden with her. The cold December air chilled her to the bones but she braved it, determined to get an answer out of him since she was going to be grounded forever in vain thanks to him.

"Right," she began firmly, sitting on the cold hard bench. Something squelched underneath her but she ignored the gross feeling, peering up at the boy standing next to her. "Why did you cancel the visit?"

"Look, I'm sorry for ruining your efforts," he apologised quietly, looking down. "That's why I've decided to take the whole blame on myself even though the girls all got grounded as well."

"Don't worry about that; I'm going to fess up anyway," she stated, seemingly surprising him. What? Did he think her so shallow? "You just answer my question: Why don't you want to get fostered?"

"I do," he countered, leaning against the outer structure of the bench. "I just can't get fostered by Archie's foster parents."

"Why?" she asked, confused. She vaguely remembered some sort of dream wherein she'd got fostered by Tyler's faceless and nameless foster parents. Wouldn't all care kids with best friends also in care want to be fostered together? "You were so upset after Archie left and you're always saying you don't get to see him as much as you'd like to. I thought that if you couldn't get John and Jacinda, Archie's foster parents would be your next choice."

"It's not that I don't  _want_  them to foster me; I like them a lot," he said, digging his gloved hands into his pockets. "I just don't want to impose."

 _Impose_. Why did he talk like such an old man sometimes? "Who says you'll be  _imposing_? You're his best mate. Why would he suddenly see you as some kind of intruder?"

"Because he's a bit weird about sharing," he answered, as if that explained everything. When he didn't elaborate, she just gave him a pointed look, and he sighed. "Do you remember what happened right before I moved into his room?"

"Yeah, you two went around asking everyone to vote for one of you to stay. I voted for you," she recounted, feeling her lips curl up into an amused smile. At the time, she'd been unable to believe that a boy as smart as Joseph had really thought that Mike and May-Li would kick a resident out based on a popularity vote. She and Tyler had purposely voted against each other to even the numbers out, impressed that their carers would play such a trick. "You do know that Mike and May-Li were bluffing?"

"Yeah, I figured it out afterwards," he responded bashfully. "Anyway, the voting only happened because we were fighting and that only happened because Archie didn't trust me when I said I didn't steal his jacket."

"And...?" she prompted, not getting the point of what he was trying to say.

"Like I said, he doesn't like sharing. We had a few... incidents after I moved in with him as well."

"So don't touch his stuff without asking," she said bluntly. "I don't see why it'd be a problem anyway. Foster kids usually get their own rooms."

"Yes, but don't you see? He doesn't like sharing clothes and stuff so he'll hate sharing parents. I don't want him to start hating me for taking up half of their attention."

Oh. Now she understood. Care kids tended to get testy about sharing parents; it was sort of expected. She'd seen it with her own two eyes when Tyler had been really jealous about Sally playing rounders with them during her first visit to Ashdene Ridge to the point that he'd taken a mean dig at Rick about his own mum. Archie was even younger than Tyler had been then and there was a good chance he'd take Joseph moving in with his family the wrong way.

"Hmm."

"See? Besides, I don't even know if he'd want his foster parents to foster me in the first place."

"Why don't you ask him yourself?"

Jody turned around to see Sam standing behind them with a huge grin on his face. She exchanged a look with Joseph, wondering how long Sam had been standing there and how much he'd heard. She'd wanted to fess up on her own rather than getting caught.

"What do you mean?" Joseph asked, breaking the silence. "Ask him myself?"

"He's waiting for you in the Quiet Room right now, with his foster parents," Sam explained. "Go on. Chop chop!"

Joseph widened his eyes at Jody before pushing himself off the bench and walking towards the house. She wondered if he was actually eager to see his visitors or if he just wanted to get out of the cold. Probably a bit of both. She stood up, looking at Sam. She'd been properly rumbled now, but how?

"Why did you call them here? He told Dee he wanted it cancelled."

"I spoke to him about it this morning before you all left for school and, I don't know, I just got this feeling that he didn't really mean it."

She chuckled. "Since when did you get so good at reading us lot?"

"Maybe since yesterday when Tyler started acted shifty the minute Dee came into the office and told me that one of you girls impersonated her."

"Ugh, what?!" she groaned. "He gave me away?!"

"Don't be too hard on him. I wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't the only other person in the room."

She nodded. That sounded about right. "I was going to fess up right after talking to Joseph, I swear. Please unground him. He actually had nothing to do with it; it was all me!"

He shrugged. "I don't know; I don't think Dee will agree. He still lied when he took all the blame on himself."

"Please, Sam!" she begged. Joseph had only taken the blame to protect her. It wasn't fair. "You can try and convince her when she comes in tomorrow!"

"Alright, I'll see," he relented, shivering as he scanned their cold surroundings. "Come on, let's go inside. It's freezing out here."

.:. QK .:.

"Alright, kids, into the minibus!" Sam shouted from the lobby. "We want to get there before it gets crowded!"

Jody watched on wistfully as the others run down the stairs and out of the door from her perch on the edge of the coffee table. Christmas was just three days away and it really showed in the way the others desperately shoved each other as if getting into the minibus first would somehow speed the whole process up. Tyler was one of the last ones down and upon seeing her, he stopped by the foot of the stairs, nearly tripping Jay up as said boy pushed past him.

"Are you sure you don't want me to get you anything?" he asked, shrugging his jacket on. "You can reimburse me when I get back."

"I'm sure," she replied sadly. "I can't think of anything  _she_  wouldn't be able to throw away, and besides, I don't even know his address. We've never really done the whole presents thing."

She hadn't even got a card the last time.

He nodded. "I'll see you when I get back then."

As Tyler left, Sam checked the time on his phone before yelling, "Joseph!"

Said boy came running down the stairs a few seconds later, wrapped in a thick blue blanket. "Yeah?"

"Behave for Dee, okay?" Sam turned to Jody. " _Both_  of you."

She huffed. "Yeah, yeah. Of course, we will."

Sam popped into the office to tell Dee he was off and Jody got up and made her way into the lounge, approaching the window that overlooked the driveway and roads. She was apparently grounded until both Mike and May-Li returned from their respective leaves which basically meant she wasn't to leave the house until the new year. A loud, drawn out sniff interrupted the silence shortly before the sound of the telly being switched on filled her ears. Tearing her eyes away from the now-full minibus, she turned to the boy who looked far too happy for someone who was grounded for the remainder of his stay at Ashdene Ridge.

"How can you be so happy? Aren't you bothered that you didn't get to go?" she questioned, joining him on the sofa. "Don't you have Christmas cards and presents to buy?"

"Nope," he answered happily, pulling his blanket closer to his chest. She winced; she was sure it was her fault he had a cold in the first place. "Sam's going to buy them all on my behalf and I'm just going to pay him back."

"Hmm."

A comfortable silence fell between them as he watched some sort of documentary and she scrolled through her phone, surveying her newsfeed.

"Jody?"

"Yeah?" she asked distractedly, scrolling further down to see something about Brexit.

"Thanks for going behind my back and making that call to my social worker."

Putting her phone down, she turned to him. "Are you being sarcastic?" She was a little surprised, to be honest. She never knew he had it in him.

"No, I'm serious," he insisted, his face reflecting his words. "I would've never worked up the guts to ask him myself. If it weren't for you, I'd still be moping around about John and Jacinda."

"No, you wouldn't. Sam's the one who actually got him to get Archie and his—your—foster parents over here," she quietly reminded him, strangely humbled by his gratitude. "I just got you grounded."

"You still made that first step for me when no one else would, not even me... and yeah, being grounded isn't great but it's worth it. I'm only here for two more days anyway."

Jody felt her throat tighten at that and looked away. The two of them had never been close over the last two years but like everyone else who'd walked in through that green porch door over the years, he was her family, and a tiny part of her hurt at the thought of waving him goodbye despite knowing that he was getting his forever family.

"Well, in that case, you're welcome."

She turned to face the TV, watching in mild interest as a satellite photo of Mars came up on the screen. The doorbell rang and Dee went to answer the door but Jody took no notice; the chances of May-Li popping in for a random visit were very low, and Mike was still abroad.

"Jody?"

Her ears pricked up at the familiar voice and it took all she had not to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. She twisted her head to look over the back of the sofa and sure enough, Luke was standing right there in front of the lounge's double doors.

"Luke?" she uttered softly, totally thrown off by his presence. She'd told him to never show up without getting Simon to inform her first, and while she didn't mind the idea so much anymore because Millie now knew about her, she'd thought he was still sticking to those rules. "What are you doing here?"

He looked at her, confused. "Your social worker told me you wanted to see me?"

What? Out of the corner of her eye, registered an imperceptible shift in Joseph's body language. She blinked before turning to him. "You...?"

"You're not the only one who knows how to call other people's social workers," he said casually with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Oh, I give up with you children!" Dee exclaimed, throwing her arms up. "It is far too easy to break into that office! Mr Milligan has got to improve the security around here!"

After Dee stormed out and was safely out of earshot, Joseph added, "Actually, Sam made the call but it was my idea."

Now that made more sense from a logistical point of view. "But why? How did you know I wanted to see him?" She'd never even admitted it to herself, choosing to blame Millie for not being able to reach out to him even if she wanted to.

"Tyler told me when I asked him why you look so down these days."

She smiled, a warm but rare feeling enveloping her. It was beautiful, meaningful times like this that she remembered that she was loved despite being just another blip in the social care system.

"So," Luke interjected, regaining her attention. "I was wondering if you'd like to come over to my place for Christmas Dinner."

"Seriously?" she asked, unable to believe her ears. What about Millie? Would she want her there?

"She's spending Christmas down at her mother's," Luke said, making her jump. Had she said that out loud? "It'll just be you and me."

"But we haven't done Christmas since..." She couldn't remember, actually. Since she was eight? No, they hadn't had the money. Seven? Nope. Kingsley had come home drunk for the first time that night and she and Luke had been forced to hide until Boxing Day.

"Since you were around five, I know," he finished for her, though knowing how old she'd been didn't help her recall anything about the occasion. "So, what do you say?"

She wasn't sure how this was going to work with her being grounded and all, but she was already halfway to saying yes when she asked, "Are you sure you don't want to spend it with her instead? Isn't it your first Christmas living together?"

"I'm the one who suggested she join her family down in London after I got that call from Simon," he revealed. "I would've done it earlier but I didn't think you'd want to spend Christmas with me."

"Of course I want to, you idiot!" she blurted out, her hand flying to her mouth. She'd never dared to speak to him like that before. It just wasn't done. She shook her head. "Sorry. I just thought you'd never ask."

In spite of her rude outburst, Luke grinned, looking more like her brother instead of Millie's boyfriend than he had in a long time. "I'll just go and ask the care worker if that's alright then."

Excited, she turned to Joseph who was still seated. "Thank you."

"Oh there's no need. Thank Sam; he's the one who made the call."

It took her a moment to realise what he meant by the statement but when it finally dawned on her, she laughed, playfully swatting him on the arm. "Shut up!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **And I have gone full circle; in the first chapter, I had Jody brooding about Luke not sending her a Christmas card and now, nearly a year later, he invites her to celebrate Christmas with him at his place.**


	30. Chapter 30

"Never let me get grounded again, Tyler," Jody called over her shoulder as she stepped into the kitchen through the patio door. "I'll never take walking down the road for granted again."

"Like I can  _keep_  you from doing anything," he quipped, following closely behind. "Especially when you're trying to help out a mate."

He had a point there. "True, but you can still try to convince me that there's a better way."

"What better way?"

She grinned, twirling a lock of her newly cut hair in between her fingers.

"Are you two Jody and Tyler?"

The new boy stood in front of her, holding the creepy puppet/doll he'd had since stepping foot into Ashdene Ridge. She hadn't had the chance to learn his name yet; he'd only arrived that morning and she'd literally whizzed past him the first chance she got, eager to experience freedom again after a full two weeks of being grounded.

"Yeah," Tyler answered, coming to stand next to her. "Why?"

"The bossy girl told me to find you and tell you that your parents are here," the kid replied timidly. "But she didn't tell me which of your parents she was talking about."

Tyler and Jody exchanged a glance, the former saying, "Today? They're not supposed to visit until next week." He frowned. "What if something's wrong?"

"Don't go jumping to conclusions just yet," she warned hastily, sensing that he was getting paranoid again. "The last time you did that, she turned out to have good news for you. Maybe it's the same this time."

"Yeah but there's nothing good left to happen; they're already married," he said before stopping cold, his features morphing into an expression she rarely saw on him. She couldn't quite decipher it but it seemed to border on disbelief. "No way. She's way too old!"

She tried not to snort. He was getting way ahead of himself. There was no way Sally would have another kid while she already had one in care. Right? She faltered. Sasha's mum, Johnny and Tee's mum and Lily's dad had all done it, and anything was possible as long as a woman was still under fifty. Oh, God...

"Well, there's no point standing in here and talking about it," she stated bluntly, noticing that the new kid was still standing in front of them, looking like he didn't know what to do with himself. "Go and talk to them."

"Right, yeah," he responded, snapping out of his mental woes. Taking his parka off and dumping it on the breakfast bar, he looked at the boy. "Thanks for letting me know...?"

The kid stared at Tyler for a bit before seemingly realising he was supposed to answer. "Sid."

"Sid," Tyler finished, casting another apprehensive glance Jody's way before disappearing through the kitchen's main door.

Giving Sid a once over, she wondered where the other two newbies were, especially the other boy who struck her as the definition of long-faced. She rolled her eyes at Tyler's parka and picked it up, knowing that May-Li would start nagging if she saw it there before its owner was done talking to his visitors. Besides, it gave her an excuse to linger around in the lobby.

Upon walking into the lobby, she found that the door to the Quiet Room was wide open and no one was inside, and that the blinds on the office windows and door were drawn all the way, indicating that whoever was inside was not be disturbed at any cost. She shivered involuntarily. The last time that had happened, she'd been the one sitting in there as the police interviewed her about her mother's death. Shaking her head, she hung the parka up on the coat hanger and shrugged out of her own, proceeding to do the same with hers. Tyler didn't have any other family besides Sally and Kamal so he was hardly being informed about a death that would actually matter to him.

"Jody!" Floss called, her voice wafting in from the lounge. "Come in here! The girl from down the road is on TV!"

Jody scowled. "I thought Mike banned us from watching that show!"

"It's just an interview!" Candi-Rose shouted. "Hurry up, she might mention Ashdene Ridge!"

She seriously doubted that—if the girl was going to mention anyone, it was going to be her next-door neighbour—but went inside anyway, seeking a distraction. Sure enough, over the next ten minutes or so, the girl didn't mention a neighbour by name and the one she did talk about was clearly the one she'd spent most of her years living next to. It didn't stop Candi-Rose and Floss from hoping, though. So absorbed were they that no one besides Charlie noticed her new haircut.

In the end, she turned out to be only half watching because as soon as the office door cracked open, she spun around to see Mike showing Sally and Kamal out. Tyler stood in the doorway with May-Li, nodding at something she said as he waved his mother and stepfather goodbye. As soon as the front door closed, Jody ran up to him and put her hands on her hips.

"That's a nice haircut, Jody," May-Li commented, returning to her desk.

"Err, thanks!" Jody called after her before turning to Tyler. "So, what's the verdict then? New family member"—Mike chuckled at that as he passed them on the way into the office, silently acknowledging the haircut—"or a long lost dead one who happened to put you in his or her will?"

He dug his hands into his pockets. "Neither," he replied quietly, bowing his head. "Mum reckons she's ready for me to move back in with her now that she's settled." She stepped back, her heart plummeting to unknown depths. He looked back up at her, his lips pressed together in a thin line. "Well... aren't you going to say something?"

"That's great!" she forced herself to say, her face growing hot. "I'm so happy for you!" He took on a strange expression then, and she didn't know what to make of it, feeling more and more flustered by the second. She had to get out. "I—I've just got to run down to the gym. You know, since I haven't been in so long and all. I'll talk to you when I get back, yeah?"

As soon as the words left her mouth, she sprinted straight up the stairs, vaguely registering him calling an agreement out after her. He was leaving. Two years after Sally had first asked him to move back in with her, he was  _finally_  leaving.

.:. QK .:.

_Punch. Punch. Punch._

She should've seen it coming, honestly. After all, it made perfect sense from Sally's point of view: her illness was under control; she had a steady job, a new house and a new husband; and all that was missing from her life now was the son she'd been forced to give up a decade ago. Tyler going back to her had been inevitable since the day her doctor had cleared her; if it wasn't for her still thinking of him as a five-year-old two years prior, he would've moved back in with her that very week. The harsh truth was that he was never meant to stay at Ashdene Ridge as long as he had, and Jody was never supposed to get the idea that he would still be there until her last day in care.

As adulthood continued to draw ever closer, she'd concocted fantasies of the two of them leaving care together like Carmen and Tee albeit two years older (since young people could now stay in children's homes until they were eighteen) to go off to uni or whatever else but now it was abundantly clear to her that they were going to have to be more like Frank and his best friend Liam. Her hands stilled. From what she'd heard, Frank and Liam had fallen out precisely because their lives had gone in such different directions and it hadn't escaped her notice that the one who'd started ignoring the other was the one who'd left the other behind. While she wasn't completely without blood relatives and Tyler was going back to his mother rather than an older brother, the parallels still worried her.

To top that all off, it wasn't just their friendship she was concerned about. Following her break-up with Brandon, they'd come to an unspoken agreement to put the romantic aspect of their relationship on hold until they were old enough to leave care but now that he was leaving earlier than 'planned', she didn't know where they stood. Would they have to start dating right away? Would he be offended if they didn't, especially since the house rules against in-house dating would no longer be standing between them? Would she lose out on her chance to be with him if they didn't take that step now? Quite frankly, she wasn't sure that she was ready. She finally felt comfortable around him in a way she hadn't since she'd first discovered certain feelings, and she didn't want to disturb that newfound (or re-found?) comfort by prematurely advancing their relationship.

_Punch!_

This was all Sally's fault. Why couldn't she have met Kamal and settled down with him a few years later? Tyler had less than two and a half years left until he turned eighteen and left the care system anyway so what was the point of taking him back now? He'd spent two-thirds of his life in care and had grown accustomed to it; he wouldn't be able to adjust to a normal life, especially a new stepfather. After all, it was one thing to occasionally see one's stepdad but it was quite another to actually live with him. No, it simply wouldn't work. Tyler belonged at Ashdene Ridge with  _her_  and the others, not in a normal house with Sally and Kamal, and Sally had no business taking him away from her. Sally had Kamal. Why couldn't she just be content with him?

Jody suddenly froze in horror. What was she thinking? She usually had nothing but respect for her best friend's mother but her inner ramblings sounded so unkind that she felt as if she was thinking of an enemy. How self-absorbed could she be? Of course, Tyler belonged with Sally; she'd given him life, for God's sake, which was the very reason Jody had such a supportive and wonderful best friend in the first place. How could she even think of keeping him to herself the same way Millie did Luke? The reality was that he was Sally's son first and everything else second, and she had to accept that and support him every step of the way. It would be hard enough for him to leave Ashdene Ridge as it was; she didn't need to make it any more so by making him worry about her and her hurt feelings.

She delivered one last punch before removing her boxing gloves. That was quite enough for today. Besides, she had a feeling she'd be frequenting this place an awful lot over the next few weeks.

.:. QK .:.

After she got back home, Jody took her time changing out of her gym clothes and showering, preoccupied with figuring out how to put on a brave face until Tyler's departure (whenever that was). By the time she went downstairs in her PJs, she was surprised to see that everyone was bustling around in the kitchen, already getting ready for dinner—she'd apparently spent near an enough an hour upstairs.

Quietly taking a seat, she surveyed the faces of those around her and wondered how they all, bar the three guests, felt about Tyler leaving. Obviously, none of them were going to be as upset as her but Floss had known him nearly as long as she had and Ryan and Finn had known him for at least three years. Her eyes met his from across the table and she smiled weakly at him, realising that while the others would undoubtedly miss him, she would be the only one who'd have difficulty adjusting to his absence. Did that make her pathetic? Well, any more so than Bailey who'd brooded after Mo had gone back to live with his granddad or Carmen who'd cried upon Lily moving away from Pottiswood?

Jay sat down next to her, knocking her arm in the process and effectively interrupting her train of thoughts. "Oh sorry," he muttered, and she replied with an 'it's alright'. He turned to Floss who sat on his other side and started grumbling about a weirdo. Looking at the other end of the table, it wasn't too hard to guess who he was talking about. She sure hoped that their guests were as temporary as Mike and May-Li had claimed because she already remembered how annoying it was to have to squeeze thirteen people around one table or three in front of the breakfast bar every single meal time.

"So, do any of yous know a girl called Sasha?" asked Freya, their sole female guest, the moment Mike and May-Li left the kitchen.

Jody raised an eyebrow. She'd expected dinnertime conversation to centre around Tyler leaving, not around someone who'd already left. If they were even thinking of the same Sasha, that was. "Sasha who?"

"Sasha Bellman," the other girl answered with a sickeningly sweet smile. "She's not an easy one to forget, seeing as she's a dwarf."

Dwarf? The term wasn't considered one hundred per cent rude per se but it still left a bad taste in Jody's mouth; everyone around her had always referred to Sasha and others like her as 'small people'.

"Yeah, we all know her," Floss replied flatly. "Her and her brother went back home last year."

"Dex?" Freya asked, appearing to be surprised. "I didn't know he was in care as well."

"Dexter," Jody corrected, not liking how familiar this stranger seemed to be with the Bellmans. Sasha's last acquaintance from outside school had been a loser thief who'd let her down. "He was here for less than a year and he went home before Sasha. How do you know them anyway? Do you watch her vlogs or something?"

Freya chuckled. "I do, actually, but that's not how I know them. We were in the same children's home for a while."

"The same children's home or Secure?" Ryan spoke up.

"Ryan!" Chloe hissed.

He looked at her as if she was stupid. "What? We all know that Sasha was on her way to Secure when she came here."

"It's okay," Freya assured. "Yeah, I went to Secure. We were supposed to go there together, actually, but she got diverted here and I never saw her again."

Candi-Rose turned to her. "Why didn't you just visit her after she left care?"

Freya shrugged. "She moved house, didn't she? I mean, her mum moved in with her stepdad, right? I don't know where they all live."

"I could tell you!"

"You really shouldn't," Floss protested, making Candi-Rose frown.

"She's right," Jay added. "We can't just go around giving ex-cons confidential information like that. Who knows what she'll do with it?"

"Jay," Bird warned, shaking his head.

Jody glanced at Freya who had her eyes fixed on Jay and, for the briefest of moments, she could've sworn she saw a hint of malice in them. Shaking her head, she allowed her eyes to drift to Tyler who was picking at his food and wondered why no one had mentioned his leaving yet, especially since they were literally talking about departed ex-care kids. In fact, why hadn't he brought it up himself in an effort to quell the hostility around the table?

As dinner progressed, the conversation turned to a lighter, more mundane topic and by the end, it became abundantly clear to her that no one had spoken of Tyler's upcoming departure because no one else besides her actually knew about it. He hadn't told anyone. Why? He'd proudly blurted it out to everyone almost immediately the last time around. What was different this time?

Since he was conveniently on washing up duty that night, she hung around in the kitchen until everyone else left to either watch TV in the lounge or go to bed before confronting him.

"How come you haven't told anyone yet?" she inquired, getting straight to the point. "Is it because you think they'll act all weird and shady again?"

He sighed deeply, shaking his head. "Do you remember when you decided to come back to Elm Tree House? Do you remember what you told me afterwards, just before Gus got fostered?"

"Uhh, yeah," she responded after a pause, a little startled by his question. "I said I'd rather live with my Dumping Ground family than my real family. I didn't really mean Luke, just Mum and Kingsley, but yeah, that's what I said and I stand by it. I should've never let my guard down in front of Kingsley and Mum; I had the right idea the first time 'round." She suppressed a yawn, peering up at him. "How do you even remember that? It was ages ago."

"It just popped into my mind today," he answered, turning the tap off. "When I was in the office this morning, actually."

Maybe it was because she was tired after hours of excessive training at the gym but she was confused. Why had he recalled those words during a meeting where his Mum had asked him to move back in with her? "What are you saying, exactly? I don't understand."

"I'm saying—well, I guess what I'm saying is that maybe I don't want to leave."

She staggered backwards, his words hitting her at full force, and suddenly found herself growing angry. She would've given anything for her mother and eldest brother to be decent people she could see herself living with (along with Luke) but here Tyler was, talking about turning his loving and caring mother down for no good reason. Did he think being a care kid was fashionable or something?

"You can't be serious," she spat half-heartedly. Of course, he was. She could see it written all over his face: the honesty behind his words. "How could you even say something like that?!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So, Freya's in this but only because I figured that she and the other two still would've passed through Ashdene Ridge if Sasha had moved out back in Series 6. Is it bad that I would've loved to see Freya vs Ryan? Interestingly enough, he was on her side until it became obvious that she was the culprit. I was disappointed that he wasn't able to see straight through her much earlier. He's supposed to be good at that stuff. If anything, he should've wanted to take her down because he'd feel threatened by another cunning being living in the same house as him, even temporarily.**


	31. Chapter 31

Jody woke up the next day with a monstrous headache and quickly came to the unfortunate realisation that her plans to spend the majority of the day at the gym would have to be scrapped. She groaned, clutching at her pounding head. What was she to do now? She could hardly stay inside her room all day just to avoid one member of the household. After their mad row in the kitchen last night, she didn't want to be around Tyler any more than she had to, even though a tiny voice in the back of her head urged her to spend as much time with him as she could before he left her forever. It was a real conundrum.

Fighting the pain in her temples, she reached out towards the bedside for her mobile and sent May-Li a quick text asking for some painkillers. After sending the message, she saw that she had two unread messages: one from Sasha and the other from Tyler. She opened the one from Sasha first, ignoring the twinge between her eyes, and it took a little time for the words to register in her mind.

_R u ok? Tyler told me ure mad at him. Wanna talk?_

It sort of rankled her that her two closest friends had discussed her behind her back but, nonetheless, she started to compose a reply, lethargically typing 'No' when May-Li burst into the room.

"Oh, I don't think so, Jody Gray," she said sternly, gently prying Jody's phone out of her hands and placing it on her desk. A pathetic noise of protest escaped her lips but, nevertheless, she accepted May-Li's decision and raised her head, taking the painkiller she'd asked for with a glass of milk. "Right, you need to rest until it starts to kick in. Come straight down to breakfast after that and do  _not_  go on your phone. Understood?"

"Yeah," she slurred, dropping her head on her pillow again. "Okay..."

She let out a sigh as she heard the soft click of the door closing. Without her phone, the (at least) half hour wait was going to be a long and boring one. Within seconds, she was proven right; with nothing to keep her mind occupied, she found herself recalling the terse words she and Tyler had exchanged last night. A considerable amount of shame and regret crept up on her. She'd realised she'd gone a little too far during the argument itself, especially when she'd accused him of spitting in the faces of everyone who couldn't go back to their mums even if they wanted to, but he'd certainly given it right back to her, telling her to pull her head out of the clouds because she was not the only one who had suffered. She had to admit, his statement had stung a little bit, not least because she'd genuinely thought that he hadn't experienced as much pain as she had just because their circumstances were different.

Since he hadn't really tried to explain himself, or rather, she hadn't given him the chance to, she still had trouble understanding why he didn't want to move back in with his mother. Wasn't going back to live with her what he'd wanted for the longest time? Sure, he was attached to Mike, May-Li, the fellow residents and possibly Ashdene Ridge itself but it was hardly a plausible reason to give up a lifelong dream. Thirteen-year-old Tyler had been ecstatic at the prospect of going back home—she promptly ignored the pang in her heart at the thought of him calling somewhere else 'home'—but why was the fifteen-year-old having second thoughts? Was the problem really Kamal? It had to be because she could see no other major cause; nothing else had changed significantly between now and two years ago, at least in Sally's life. In Tyler's life, though? She could think of one thing...

Given that she'd already made a couple of incorrect assumptions that'd offended him, she was hesitant to speculate further and jump to yet another conclusion but couldn't shake the idea that she was somehow responsible for his indecisiveness. After all, two years ago, her mother had still been alive and Luke hadn't been twisted around some woman's little finger so Tyler hadn't had to worry about her being alone in the world as much as she knew he did now. Did it worry him enough for him to decide to stay at Ashdene Ridge, though? She sure hoped not. She couldn't have spent all that precious training time talking herself into accepting his imminent departure if he wasn't even going to leave, and because of her at that, though she couldn't deny that the idea of him giving up his chance at a normal life just to be with her was romantic. In the eyes of someone like Candi-Rose, of course. Just because Jody Gray now believed in love, didn't mean she was a total mushy idiot.

Realising that the pain between her eyes had subsided a little, she sat up and looked around her room, only for her gaze to fall directly on two identical photos of her and Tyler on the wall to her right. She had no idea why she'd printed that particular selfie twice but supposed she could give the spare to the other person in the photo to remember her by when it came time for him to leave. If he was ever going to leave at all, that was. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. Maybe it was time to find out.

.:. QK .:.

Following a quick shower and visit to the office to let May-Li know she was feeling better, Jody traipsed into the garden, blinking rapidly against the ice-cold breeze that hit her square in the face. Spending time outdoors all year round, even during subzero temperatures, was normal at Ashdene Ridge but she couldn't help but wonder if it made her and her housemates weird compared to kids who weren't in care. Drawing closer to the make-shift football pitch, she was surprised to see Kamal and Sally there; the former was playing football with Bird and Jay, against Tyler, Finn and Alex, and the latter was watching on from the green garden bench.

Not wanting to cut short what could potentially be Tyler's last kickabout as a care kid, she decided to wait until after the game was over to talk to him and proceeded to join Sally and make polite small talk with her. As the only girl who played football around here, sitting on the sidelines and merely watching for once was a strange experience. When Tyler's side won and started celebrating, her eyes suddenly watered up and she wasn't so sure it was because of the bitter cold. She sniffed, not daring to look at Sally as Kamal and Tyler approached them.

"I told you my son would win, didn't I?" Sally teased Kamal, standing up and engulfing a bashful Tyler in a hug. "Oh, my boy!"

"Mum, my friends are watching!" Tyler said through gritted teeth, clearly embarrassed. He played the part of disgruntled teenage son pretty well already. Maybe he'd fit right into normal society. Despite her grim musings, Jody suppressed a giggle at Sally complaining about Tyler's hair. "I was just trying something new"—he looked at Jody—"I'm not the only one!"

"Alright, alright, whatever you say," Sally acquiesced, following his line of sight. She turned to her grinning husband. "Why don't we go inside, Kam? Don't you have that business call you need to make?"

"That's right," Kamal replied, taking her by the hand. Jody smiled at the action as Tyler wordlessly sat down next to her in the spot previously occupied by his mother. "Be ready in about half an hour, yeah?"

Tyler nodded in response before the newlyweds made themselves scarce. Jody inhaled deeply. Half an hour? Was that all they had left together? Had he spent the entire morning packing while she'd lazed about in bed, agonising over him  _not_  wanting to leave? Perhaps her harsh words last night had knocked some sense into him after all.

Realising that he was expecting her to speak, she turned to him, forcing the corners of her lips to curve upwards. "Look, about last night, I didn't mean to be such a bitch. I just didn't want you second-guessing yourself over such an important decision. You do that a lot."

He shook his head. "Nah, you're alright. I needed to hear it and it was best coming from you. I don't mean to be so indecisive, it just happens. You know I overthink things a lot."

So did she, to be honest. So much and so often. "I know." She looked away from him before quietly adding, "I'm glad you ended up making the right decision."

There was a slight pause in the conversation but he picked it right up following a short exhale. "Yeah. The  _right_  decision." She pursed her lips, her gut churning at the implication that leaving her was the correct thing to do, even though he was merely echoing her words. "We all have to let go of this place one day, don't we? No matter how much we don't want to."

"Mhm," she agreed. "You would've had to leave at eighteen anyway. It's just happening a little earlier, and in a better way."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, you'll get to live in a normal family before moving out for uni and when you finish, you'll have somewhere to stay until you can afford to get your own place. You won't have to stress about having nowhere to go like Luke did and end up with a bad roommate because of it. You'll  _belong_  somewhere."

Unlike her. She and the others could say that Ashdene Ridge was home as much as they wanted to but the truth was that none of them could waltz back in years after leaving and take up on the couch like most normal people could when they returned to what they called 'home'. While Mike and May-Li were like parents to them all, the best most of them were ever going to get, they couldn't forever be. As it said in Tracy's book, they were all lost boys when they arrived at the Dumping Ground; their time in this place was a transition period, that was all, and Tyler's was up. He was found. Sasha should've given the book to him.

"A bad roommate?" he questioned, his voice sounding strange. "I thought—Jody? I know we've never really talked about it but I thought that  _you_  would be that roommate and that you had the same idea."

She quickly turned to him, blurting out, "I do!" She hadn't been thinking; whenever she pictured the future, she saw herself and Tyler moving into a big house (which suspiciously resembled Elm Tree House)  _after_  getting married. She'd never really thought about what would happen in between uni and getting married which was pretty stupid and short-sighted of her. They'd have to live somewhere during that time, wouldn't they? "Sorry." She shook her head. "My mind's all over the place. I can't think about any of this properly right now. I don't even know why I brought it up. Life after uni just feels so far away—I mean, that's the life stage Luke's at and he's six years older than me—and there are way more things going on in my life right now for me to think about like exams and college applications!"

"Jody?" he spoke calmly, the comparably quiet tone of his voice making her realise that her own voice had somehow escalated a few notches.

"Yeah?" she prompted, her heart racing. She needed to go to the gym ASAP before she started having a mental breakdown in front of him. For his sake, she couldn't let him see how upset she really was about him leaving.

"You will be alright here without me, won't you?"

She was apparently wearing her heart on her sleeves already.

"I can look after myself, Tyler," she answered haughtily, crossing her arms. "I'm fifteen, not five."

He sighed. "I know you can. That's not what I meant. I just know how hard it was for you when Sasha left, and now I'm leaving too, and to be honest, you didn't really react in the best way the last time this nearly happened."

She swallowed deeply. She knew her immature behaviour from two and a half years ago would come back to bite her in the arse one day. "I was, like, twelve! Well, nearly thirteen, since it was your thirteenth birthday an' all." She stopped, realising she was going off track. "I  _can_  handle this, Tyler," she insisted, dropping her arms and grabbing the hand he'd precariously placed on the bench in between them, "as long as you don't drop off the face of the Earth like Luke did."

"I won't," he responded instantly, drawing their joint hands into his lap and placing his other one on top of them. "I'd never do that to you. Best friends forever, remember?"

She nodded, ignoring the stinging of her nose—the tell-tale sign of oncoming tears. "Forever."

.:. QK .:.

In the end, she chose not to go outside and see Tyler off with the others, opting to watch his departure from the stained glass window above the stairs instead. Peering out of the slightly cracked open window at a certain angle, she saw Kamal and Sally waiting by the former's swanky sports car, smiling at something or someone out of her line of sight. While she couldn't see much, she could hear the excited chatter coming from down below as everyone, perhaps save for the three temporary residents, said their final goodbyes to her best friend.

She wondered if he was at all disappointed by her absence and maybe even seeking her out with his eyes, hoping she would show up at the last minute. She knew she ought to have been down there with him but wasn't quite selfless enough to stand there and smile as he left her behind nor willing to forget that up until recently, she'd expected them to leave this place in the manner they'd arrived: together.

Still, all things aside, she was determined to get on with life hereafter for her own sake, if not for his. There was no point in being melodramatic like one half of a pair of star-crossed lovers; his mother's house was well within walking distance, closer than her own mother's permanent residence, and she would continue to see him at school five days a week. It'd just take some time getting used to, that was all.

Down below, Tyler finally edged into her line of sight, receiving a clap on the back from his still relatively new stepfather as he reached for the door handle and yanked it open. He stood by as Kamal ducked into the car and adjusted what she assumed to be the seats, and just before getting into the car himself, he turned ever so slightly and peered straight up at her as if he'd known she was there all along. It was a fleeting moment and she wasn't sure if he'd even actually seen her but she knew she was forever going to regard it as their last goodbye.

All of a sudden, she heard a loud bang coming from downstairs and hastily spun around to see Floss and Freya standing outside the office.

"Mike!" Floss hollered. "Freya broke into the office!"

Jody leant against the wall, her back hitting one of the numerous framed paintings hung around the house, and proceeded to watch on as Mike and May-Li ran into the lobby.

"Right, would someone like to explain what's going on here?!" May-Li exclaimed.

Floss happily obliged. "I came inside to find Jody and I saw Freya going through the filing cabinet and Lucas looking out for her!"

Freya began to defend herself, and Jody rolled her eyes. She could always trust this place to take her mind off things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So, I'm nearly done with my TDG marathon and I have to say that Series 7 is a strong one, though I did find the premiere to be a little redundant and overdone. I mean, we already saw Sasha act out in Series 6 and I found it hard to believe that anyone would believe Sasha was 'bad' after seeing how much the Dumping Ground meant to her in Series 6 Episode 5. Anyway, I found the sixth episode to be quite funny because I've always seen Tyler as the class clown type of guy and it was finally confirmed. I've also noticed that Candi-Rose seems to be a lot closer to Bird and even Jay than Chloe even though the two girls continue to be referred to as best friends.**


	32. Chapter 32

Jody yawned loudly as she rifled through her locker for her elusive maths homework. At the beginning of the break, her friends had badgered her to go to one of the quads with them and look for the homework later but she'd refused, knowing that she'd end up being late to her next lesson if she did. Instead, here she was, starting to doubt that the homework was even in the locker at all; there was a strong possibility it was lying around in some corner of her bedroom.

"Hey."

Upon hearing his voice, she lightened up and drew the locker door to a close to see him standing there. It was hard to believe that it'd only been twenty-four hours since he'd officially left care; merely having breakfast and walking to school without him had made it feel like he'd spent the weekend in Las Vegas again.

"Hey," she replied, deciding to fish around for the homework in her bag instead. "How was your first morning out of care? Was it weird?"

"It was alright, actually," he answered cheerfully. "Walking down to breakfast by myself was a little weird but I can't say I miss having to fight over the cereal. Or the bread. Or a seat at the table."

She exhaled shortly in amusement. "Or lining up for the bog. Or being woken up by screaming and yelling."

"Actually, Mum woke me up earlier than I wanted her to. She said I was going to be late but I wasn't even close." She refrained from smiling. It sounded like Sally had slipped into the typical nagging mother mode already. "What are you looking for anyway?"

"My maths homework," she responded, just about ready to empty her bag on the floor for everyone to see. "Mr Barrett's going to kill me! Imagine what my report's going to look like. My Science teacher already threatened to give me a bad one because I forgot to do my homework that one time."

"Yeah, mine an' all. She says I'm the class clown."

She giggled. "She's not wrong." She dug her hands into the outer pockets of her bag, only to find an old work experience form she'd never handed in to the school office. On the subject of offices, she was suddenly reminded of what'd happened in Mike and May-Li's yesterday and looked up at Tyler. "Guess what happened right after you left."

"Wh—"

"Hey, Tyler!" someone hollered from down the hallway, and Jody turned to see Aliyah's admirer Jamie standing there, waving his arms madly at them. Or rather, at Tyler. "Get over here; you have to see this!"

"What is it?" Tyler yelled back. "I'm kind of busy!"

"It's Bill! He's finally going to do it! Hurry up!"

She pursed her lips, what little enthusiasm she'd felt at the prospect of sharing Freya's evil master plan dying down, and turned back to Tyler who had an apologetic look on his face. Whatever it was that Bill was about to do, it was clearly a big deal. "He sounds well excited," she commented casually, returning to searching her bag. That homework was not going to find itself. "Better go and see what he wants to show you."

"You sure?" he asked, giving her pause.

She stopped her rummaging and peered back up at him. Why was he suddenly asking her that? Between their very separate groups of friends, she was used to breaks where they barely got a word in before being interrupted. In fact, it wasn't out of the ordinary for them not to even see each other outside of shared lessons some days. It'd been like this for as long as she could remember, perhaps since they'd started high school.

"Yeah, of course," she replied, mustering up a smile. "Go on, then. You don't want that lot screaming 'mates before dates' at you."

He returned her smile before muttering a 'see you later', and as soon as he turned his back to her, her own smile faltered. As he reached Jamie at the end of the corridor, the corners of her lips relaxed altogether and she tore her gaze away from them, proceeding to turn her bag upside down and watch its contents spill all over the floor. She could tell him about Freya later, couldn't she? It wasn't as if she wasn't going to see him again.

.:. QK .:.

"Now that I've got you on your own," May-Li began as she started the engine, "you can tell me exactly why you didn't do your maths homework."

Jody sighed from the passenger seat. What did Mr Barrett gain from ratting her out? He'd already kept her in for lunch, destroying her chance to see Tyler or rather glance at him from across the dining hall. "I did it. I just forgot it at home. I tried to tell my teacher that but he didn't believe me and made me skip lunch. That's child abuse!"

"Maybe now you'll think twice before leaving your homework lying around in your room?"

She scoffed. "It wasn't even in my room. It was in the Quiet Room."

May-Li chuckled and Jody rolled her eyes, unlocking her phone to check if she had any new messages or interesting notifications. Nothing. Not that she'd expected anything per se but it would've been nice if Tyler had texted her to say hi, especially since they'd been unable to pick their interrupted conversation back up during school hours. She would've texted him herself but since he was the one going through a major change in his life, she'd decided to leave that ball in his court. That, and she didn't want to come off as clingy; according to Candi-Rose's magazines, there was nothing more off-putting to a guy than a girl who didn't respect his space.

She wondered what he was even doing right now. Was he out with a school friend? Or perhaps at home, living the normal family life? Was he thinking of her like she was of him? Or was he simply too busy to spare her a second thought, let alone many? May-Li stopped the car at a traffic light with a jerk, snapping Jody out of her thoughts. Tyler's priority at present was settling in to his new life, the one he'd started only yesterday, not worrying about her.

Shaking her head at her selfish rhetoric, Jody put her phone away and propped her elbow up on the ledge underneath the window, taking to staring outside. For the next ten minutes or so, she watched on in boredom as all manner of people walked by, some of them reminding her of her various housemates. Ashdene Ridge really was a hubbub of misfits from all walks of life, bonded through the unfortunate and sad reality of being care kids.

"Are you alright?" May-Li suddenly asked, her concerned voice breaking the silence. "You're awfully quiet today."

"Am I?" she questioned flatly. "I didn't realise..."

"Look, I know you and Tyler are close but he needs time to re-acquaint himself to family life and you need time to adjust to his absence."

Even though May-Li's tone was not at all stern, Jody keenly felt as if she was being told off. "What are you saying?"

"That being glued to your phone and pushing your other friends away isn't helping anyone."

She couldn't help but scowl. "I'm not glued to my phone. I've only checked it once today. I'm not ignoring anyone either."

"Not today perhaps but after Mike and I dealt with Freya yesterday, you holed yourself up in your bedroom until dinner and went back up as soon as you were done eating. Don't tell me you weren't on your phone then. As for pushing the others away, Charlie was trying to talk to you this morning but you barely responded and I heard that Candi-Rose wanted to walk to school with you but you told her to go away."

Well, Candi-Rose was a right snitch. Why was May-Li giving her the third degree, anyway? Was it a crime to want some time to herself? "Is going to bed early a bad thing now?!" she exclaimed, undoing her seatbelt as May-Li pulled up into a side road near the gym. "Why?! You and Mike are always moaning about us hanging around the TV when Shona's on duty!"

"There's no need to shout, Jody," May-Li admonished calmly. "All I'm saying is that maybe you should cut back on texting Tyler or whatever it is you're doing and spend some time with your other friends. Can you honestly say that you weren't on your phone at least some of the time yesterday? What else would you have been doing up there on your own until dinner?"

Gripping the straps of her gym bag, Jody didn't answer. To be honest, May-Li was right; she'd spent the many hours before dinner going through her entire camera roll, ninety per cent of which consisted of photos of her and Tyler, and the years-long text message and Whatsapp threads between them. In fact, she'd spent a considerable amount of time reading and re-reading his last text message to her:  _u were right_.

Nearly an entire day later, she was still none the wiser as to what exactly she'd been right about, but those three words still made her feel all warm and giddy inside. She bit her lip despite herself, a smile threatening to break free; the girls in romantic novels only felt that way about a very different set of three words—three words she wasn't quite ready to say out loud just yet, let alone hear from someone else.

"I didn't mean to upset you, Jody," May-Li stated. "I just want what's best for you  _and_  Tyler."

Could she ever doubt that?

"Yeah, I know," she answered humbly, throwing the door open and stepping outside. "I'll call you when I'm done."

.:. QK .:.

Despite May-Li's earnest advice, Jody spent the rest of the week going to the gym after school every single day in a conscious effort to avoid being reminded of Tyler's absence; it was already hard enough making herself content with only seeing him for a few minutes at school each day let alone spending time at home and realising that he wasn't going to walk through the door any minute and join her on the sofa or in the garden. This time, though, May-Li accompanied her as opposed to merely dropping her off and Jody could just feel her carer's eyes boring into her as she sparred, from her place in the corner where she was discussing something with the gym owner, Bernadette. She stopped to take a long swig from her water bottle, nodding as her sparring partner told her she was going to leave for the day.

"Are you in trouble?" Jody nearly jumped at the voice, turning on her heel to see Brandon standing at her side. "May-Li's been staring at you for the last ten minutes."

"She hasn't been happy with me lately but what can you do?" she answered with a shrug, closing the cap on her bottle. "How are you, anyway? We haven't talked in a while."

The Wednesday that had just been and gone had marked one month since their break-up and while he'd said at the time that he still wanted to be friends, he'd kept his distance from her ever since, exchanging a quick 'hi' and 'bye' with her at most. It'd hurt her to know that she was the reason  _he_  had been hurting but she'd never once regretted her decision to end things with him. After all, his pain would've been so much worse if she'd latched onto him for another five or ten years only for him to discover her kissing Tyler in her university flat or behind the church at  _their_  wedding. She didn't think she had it in her to cheat but there was no telling what sort of person she would've become if she'd had to hide her true feelings for years on end. Thank God things hadn't and would never come to that. Brandon deserved better and she sure hoped he'd move on one day if he hadn't already.

"I'm alright," he replied, nodding slowly. "Sorry about not stopping for a chat earlier but I've been on a tight schedule lately; been busy babysitting my sister and that. Where were you anyway? During the holidays, I mean. I didn't see you once."

She laughed breathlessly, bowing her head. "I was grounded until last Friday. Well, Saturday, really. It's a long story."

"Oh," he let out, briefly looking at something over her shoulder. "So, are you trying out for the team then?"

"Huh?" she uttered dumbly. What team? "What are you on about?"

He raised an eyebrow. "The trials for the regional team: Tyne, Tees and Wear." She blinked rapidly in confusion. "Wait, didn't your sparring partner tell you?"

"No, she didn't," she responded, finally understanding what he was talking about.

When she'd joined the gym last year, she'd heard talk of the trials that'd just been and gone but hadn't taken much notice owing to her status as a newbie. Back then, boxing hadn't been so much an enjoyable hobby as it had a safe and healthy outlet for her anger—a coping mechanism to keep her going as her teenage life crumbled around her.

"That's a little odd," Brandon stated. "I'm sure she told me she was trying out an' all."

"Maybe she doesn't want more competition," she quipped, unable to help herself. It was no secret that most of the girls in this place envied each other's skills and physique. She doubted it was any different for the boys. "I don't know why she bothers; she's not going to get any from me."

"Jody, can I have a word?" a voice she recognised as Bernadette's questioned from behind. She spun around to see the gym owner with May-Li in tow. "I was just telling May-Li how impressed I am with your dedication—not everyone manages to come here every day and spar at their best—and she agrees when I say that you should consider trying out for the team."

Jody glanced at May-Li, out of habit more than anything else, before looking back at Bernadette. "I don't know... I've never really thought about it. Boxing's just something I do in my spare time; I'm not sure I want a career out of it."

She was not ambitious; she had no delusions of grandeur of becoming a famous sports personality. Besides, she was all set to attend a college fair next month and even though she didn't know what subjects she wanted to take yet, she had her heart set on going to uni like her brother before her.

"It doesn't have to have any bearing on your career," Bernadette said matter-of-factly. "I only suggested it because you already train enough to do the trials as it is. You might as well put it to good use."

"For what it's worth, I think you could make the team," Brandon piped up, digging his hands into his pockets. "It's why I asked you if you were trying out in the first place."

Bernadette smiled at him before refocusing her gaze on Jody, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Think about it. The deadline for signing up is next Sunday."

Without another word, Bernadette walked off towards the boxing ring where two of Brandon's friends were sparring, leaving Jody with her ex-boyfriend and May-Li.

"She's right," May-Li told her, an encouraging expression on her face. "As long as you keep on top of your homework, it shouldn't affect your education. There's no need to rush but I think you should go for it."

Jody wrinkled her nose, peering up at Brandon. "Are you trying out for the boys' team?"

"I might be."

She nodded soberly. She was already in hot water with two of her teachers for missing homework deadlines and another for 'daydreaming'. Could she cope with training and studying at the same time? How did that even work?


	33. Chapter 33

"But May-Li, this is so unfair!" Jody complained, frustrated. "I always go to the gym on Saturday!"

A mere five minutes ago, she'd come downstairs with her gym bag to ask May-Li for a lift to the gym, only to be denied. Figuring that May-Li was simply too busy to give her a lift, she'd announced that she was going to get the bus instead but had been sorely disappointed when May-Li told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to go the gym until tomorrow.  _Tomorrow!_

"Yes, but you don't usually go to the gym every day of the week," May-Li replied pointedly. "You've been five days in a row. You need a rest day."

"But you heard yourself how impressed Bernadette is with my  _daily_  sparring," Jody countered proudly. "How am I meant to make the team if I don't keep it up?"

May-Li stopped what she was doing, tipping her head to the side. "You've decided to go for it then?"

"Well, I won't be able to if you don't let me go, will I?" Jody asked tersely, refraining from rolling her eyes.

May-Li was completely missing the point; she'd wanted to use the weekend to see if she could balance homework and the level of training required to make the team before making her final decision. How was she supposed to do that if she was stuck here? Half the weekend wouldn't be enough to determine that and next weekend was the deadline.

Despite Jody's insistence, May-Li stuck to her guns. "Everyone needs a rest day, Jody Gray, even you. As a fitness instructor, Bernadette won't tell you any different."

Jody groaned, throwing her arms up in the air. "What am I supposed to do then, after I've finished my homework? You won't even let me talk to Tyler so am I meant to just sit around and watch TV for the rest of the day?"

Spending hours in front of the television on a chilly winter's day didn't sound bad in itself but it was something she used to do with Tyler when he was back from work and she was back from boxing; given the current circumstances, she didn't want to be reminded of him any more than necessary. She understood why May-Li had told her to lay off the texting—not that there'd been any texting at all, to begin with—but it didn't mean she had to like it. As stupid and cheesy as it sounded, she felt like a Juliet who'd been forbidden from seeing her Romeo.

"Mike's taking some of the others out to a charity fundraiser for the homeless," May-Li stated, resuming her work. "There's going to be an auction. They've got an extra seat on their table; why don't you join them?"

"I haven't got any money," Jody answered instantly. She wasn't lying, exactly. She was saving up for a pair of new trainers and she only had enough to spare for a return bus ticket. Surely, nothing at the charity auction was going to go for that cheap of a bid? "Are Candi-Rose and Charlie going?"

"Yep. So are Alex, Finn and Jay."

Right, so no one to talk to and no one to play football (and freeze to death) with either. Who did that leave, then? Ryan and Floss? Brilliant, just bloody brilliant! During dinner one evening, she'd made the mistake of ranting to them as well as the others about May-Li not letting her see Tyler; now, whenever they saw her, they teased—taunted, in Ryan's case—her about missing her 'man'. It certainly didn't help that the entire household once again thought something was going on between them now that it was common knowledge that she'd broken up with Brandon. Besides Ryan and Floss, the only others left were Bird, Chloe, Taz and Sid, the latter being the only guest they'd received last week to become a permanent resident; Freya and Lucas had been kicked out on the spot after the former's plan to blackmail Sasha to get herself placed back into care, or rather Secure, had been exposed. A game of pool with Bird it was then, even though he always beat everyone since revealing himself to be a pool shark.

"Well," she started loudly, bitterly smiling at May-Li, "I'll go and find Bird, then."

"You do that," May-Li replied, and Jody just had to restrain herself from  _growling_  at her carer's triumphant smile. She marched upstairs, headed for Bird's room where said boy was no doubt listening to music.

.:. QK .:.

Half an hour later, an emotionally drained Jody let herself fall onto the sofa. So what if she was no longer a spoilsport? Her pride still sustained tiny fractures each time she lost whether it was at pool or Monopoly. It was nothing compared to being bested in a sparring match, of course, but it still chipped away at her somewhat fragile self-esteem. Catching Ryan looking at her from the other sofa out of the corner of her eye, she turned to him, sensing he had something he wanted to say.

"What?"

"You tell me," he responded dryly. "Why the long face? Is Tyler not returning your texts?"

"Oh haha," she muttered sarcastically, not rising to the bait. She hadn't been ignored. How could she, when she'd never texted him in the first place? She was still waiting for him to make a move first. "Bird just thrashed me at a game of pool... No big deal."

Bird, who was sitting next to Ryan, looked up from his laptop. He'd gone straight on it after beating her while she'd just stood next to the pool table like an idiot, trying to process her loss. "I wouldn't say thrashed. You played well."

Oh, bless him. He was humouring her, she just knew it. It was probably why Candi-Rose liked him so much; she could only imagine what he did for the younger girl's ego. "Thanks."

Just then, Floss entered the room and started debating what to watch on TV with Ryan, and Jody tuned them out, proceeding to scroll through the notifications on her phone. There were no texts from Tyler but then again, she hadn't expected any; since college application deadlines were drawing closer, he'd started to take his work experience more seriously, going in for a shift whenever he could, which unfortunately meant he was no longer free every other Saturday. Not that he would've wanted to spend any of them with her, anyway; wouldn't that honour go to his family instead? She didn't even feel bitter thinking about it—it was just the way things worked. Sasha, on the other hand, had texted to say that she would indeed be attending the same college fair next month.

Jody typed a reply when, all of a sudden, she heard the front door swing open followed by loud complaints from both Jay and Candi-Rose. Hitting send, she exchanged a bewildered look with Floss before peering over the back of the sofa to see Mike more or less forcing Alex into the office. Odd. They'd barely been gone an hour and while the venue was nearby, they were back much earlier than anticipated. As the door to the office closed, Jay and Candi-Rose came into view, traipsing into the lounge.

"What happened?" Floss inquired gleefully, directing her question at Jay. "Did you have to come back early because you lot didn't have enough money on you? I  _told_  you you should've held back on that chocolate spree."

"You're wrong as usual," Jay scoffed smugly. "It was all your BFF's fault, actually. You should've been there to see it. He bid two-thousand pounds for a holiday, right, and then when he won, he asked the woman who was running the fundraiser if she'd take a tenner instead. She obviously said no and then he totally lost the plot and started yelling at her about how fake she was in front of  _everyone_."

Ryan whistled. "He's outdone himself this time."

Jody rolled her eyes at the unhelpful comment as Bird spoke up. "Did you manage to get anything before all that happened? Did they actually have anything going for a tenner?"

"Finn got a ukelele for exactly ten pounds," Candi-Rose replied, and Jay nodded, "but that was it. I told Mike and May-Li that cutting down on our allowances wasn't a good idea!"

"It wasn't their  _idea_ ," Ryan said flatly, doing quotation marks with his fingers as he said the last word. "They had no choice. Budget cuts."

"Whatever," Candi-Rose shot back. "I wish Tyler was still here. As forum rep, he would've been able to stop it."

"Or he wouldn't have."

"Uhh, hellooooo," Floss interjected, "I told you I'd get our allowances back, didn't I? It's just going to take some time. Being the forum rep isn't as easy as it looks, you know."

"Well, Tyler always told you that," Jody quipped, rising to her feet, "but you never listened to him. Good luck."

Without another word, she made her way out of the lounge with slumped shoulders. Sat at home on a Saturday, it'd been possible to trick herself into thinking Tyler wasn't around because he was doing a shift at the radio station but hearing Floss talk about being the forum rep had burst her bubble. He wasn't one of  _them_  anymore, just like the countless others who'd been found before him. No wonder he hadn't texted about visiting yet—he'd left this part of his life behind for good.

.:. QK .:.

Aimlessly wandering around, Jody soon found herself in the garden, setting upon Charlie who seemed to be so engrossed in her chores that she didn't look up as she was approached. By the looks of it, she was currently in the middle of weeding.

"Did Alex really flip out at the auction?" Jody asked bluntly. Charlie jumped before peering up and laughing in embarrassment.

"Hi, Jody," she greeted, wiping at her forehead with the back of a gloved hand. "Word travels fast. I hope the others aren't too upset about their trip being cut short."

"They'll get over it," Jody dismissed, gingerly sitting on the ground next to the older girl. "What actually happened? I mean, I know that Alex can fly off the handle sometimes but why now? Why today? What set him off?"

Charlie resumed digging. "Well, it was a fundraiser for the homeless; it probably raked up some bad memories. That, and he didn't believe that the organiser had genuinely been homeless in the past like she said she had."

"What made him think that she was lying? Was it something she said? Or did he just know? Like a gut instinct or something?"

"I couldn't say," she answered with a shrug. "I don't know what's going through his mind."

Jody didn't believe that for a second. It was no secret that Charlie and Alex were close and despite not attracting rumours to the same extent as herself and Tyler, there were still whispers here and there. Sometimes, she found herself wondering if they were true.

"You'd know if you asked."

Charlie's hands stilled. "There's nothing to ask. He's just had a bad day, that's all."

Jody raised an eyebrow but otherwise remained silent; Charlie clearly knew something but was determined to keep it to herself, most likely because she'd been asked to by Alex. She glanced down at her hands. There was no point in beating that dead horse over the head with a stick.

After a lengthy pause, Charlie softly called her name, and she curiously looked back up from her hands. "What?"

"What would you do if you ran into someone you never thought you'd see again?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean if someone who'd walked out on you when you needed them the most suddenly turned up again years later. How would you feel?"

She narrowed her eyes. If she didn't know any better, she would've thought Charlie was asking because her father had shown up, but that was impossible: the man had died of a drug overdose when Charlie was a toddler. Just who or rather what had brought on this vein of questioning, then?

"Well, angry," she finally replied. "That's how I felt, anyway, when my brother came here after our mum's funeral. I know he was only out of my life for a few months rather than years but I think the feeling is pretty much the same. You feel like you're being mocked by someone who betrayed you. You wonder why he suddenly wants to be in your life again when he was the one who left you in the first place. You feel irritated when you're made to feel like the bad one for not accepting him back into your life."

Charlie shook her head. "But what if that person doesn't recognise you? You know, because it's been more than ten years. What if they've already moved on? Already replaced you?"

The questions were so eerily reminiscent of Jody's experience with Gray that she momentarily froze, wondering if Charlie somehow knew the truth of what had happened in the supermarket last year. Even if she did, why was she suddenly bringing it up now? Gray hadn't been on Jody's mind in a serious capacity since her last birthday, and she rather preferred it that way.

"Charlie... what is this about?" she questioned warily. "Why are you suddenly asking these questions? Have you got a long lost brother I don't know about or something?"

"Oh, no, it's just hypothetical," Charlie responded nonchalantly, conveniently averting her gaze as she removed her gloves and gathered up the gardening tools. She wasn't too good of a liar. "I think I'm done here..." She turned back to Jody with a polite but forced smile on her face. "Are you going to come in? It's nearly lunchtime."

Jody merely nodded, pushing herself up off the ground as she tried not to think of the many hours she had yet to kill  _after_  lunch.

.:. QK .:.

_Want to come round for lunch?_

Jody sighed, typing back an emphatic (in terms of texting) 'no'. Trust her brother to want to hang out with her when she was actually otherwise occupied. Besides, his invitation was so out-of-the-blue; she'd had dinner with him at his place less than a month ago and it was unlike him to want to see her again so soon, especially with Millie around.

_Can't. Busy training. Another time?_

Within seconds, her phone screen lit up with another message notification, but upon receiving a pointed look from her sparring partner, she decided to mute her mobile and put it away. While finally being able to once again contact Luke directly and banter over text with him like normal siblings felt great, she couldn't let it get in the way of her training; if she was to sign up for the trials, she had to be at the top of her game which meant besting her sparring partner for a start.

"So, are you trying out?" the girl asked in her thick Geordie accent. Unlike Jody, she was born  _and_  bred in Pottiswood. "I didn't see you here yesterday."

"You know I'm trying out," Jody replied shortly, focussing on her opponent's stance. "Thanks for telling me about the trials, by the way."

"Thought you already knew," the girl said casually.

It suddenly occurred to Jody that she didn't even know her sparring partner's name. Granted, they'd only started sparring together sometime after she'd broken up with Brandon and she'd very recently been absent for a whole two weeks; they'd only really sparred together for a total of three weeks.

"How would I? I wasn't here during the holidays, remember?" Jody shot back, lunging at the girl.

The girl effortlessly blocked her. "Well, it turned out alright in the end. I bet your boyfriend clued you in on it an' all."

"Ex-boyfriend," she coolly corrected. She wanted to turn around to see if Brandon was nearby at all but didn't dare take her eyes off her wily rival.

"Just as well; real boxers don't have boyfriends."

Jody stopped short, slipping a well-aimed punch. She didn't like the girl's tone at all. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That real life isn't like what they show in the movies—even the ones about boxing. Real strong women don't need men."

She had to admit, the girl had a point. When she'd first become so immersed in the world of boxing that she'd irritated Tyler with her constant raving about it, she'd indulged in watching countless films about female boxers, most of which were complete and utter trash. The majority of them contained grossly unnecessary romantic sub-plots and one even had the premise of a woman becoming a boxer in order to reunite with her deadbeat father. At a time when she'd just discovered Gray who hadn't even recognised her, watching that last film had stung.

"My best mate is a guy," she stated breathlessly as she pondered her next move. "Are you telling me I don't need him?"

"I'd be surprised if you didn't," the girl shot back. "You always clung on to Dalton like he was the best thing in the world."

Jody's face grew hot in an instant. She'd never  _clung_  on to Brandon, and she'd certainly never revered him like other girls did their boyfriends. Heck, she hadn't even had feelings for him! Who did this girl think she was, talking like she knew her and referring to others by their surnames like she was a professional coach or something?

Before she knew it, said girl punched her in the gut. Jody wheezed, involuntarily dropping her defensive stance and receiving a punch to the face that sent her careening to the floor of the ring. She clutched at her head, forcing herself to sit up despite her dizziness.

"Maybe you should think about boys less," the girl's voice rung from somewhere above her, "and about training more."

She grit her teeth. How had she fallen for this, the oldest trick in the book? The one Ryan had used on her all those years ago during PoPo's challenge and the one she'd used right back on him, enabling her to defeat him and finally get him to stop bullying her.

"Gray! What have I said about knockout punches without proper supervision?!"

It took a few seconds for Jody to register the voice as that of one of the gym trainers who worked alongside Bernadette, one of the many who insisted on calling every single member by their last names. But why was she being yelled at?! She hadn't been the one to deliver the so-called knockout punch. She was the victim! As one of the other boxers helped her up, she opened her mouth to defend herself but was beaten to it.

"Sorry; I got a little carried away," her sparring partner apologised. "It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't," the trainer said firmly before casting her eyes upon Jody. "Other Gray, are you alright? Do I need to make a call home to get someone to pick you up?"

 _Other_  Gray? She stared at her sparring partner, the blood draining from her face. Gray...?

Upon realising that the trainer was repeating herself, Jody murmured a response that was unintelligible to her own ears, unable to tear her gaze away from the other girl, a teenager who shared her surname and lived in the same town as her  _and_  Gray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I know this update is somewhat late for me but I've had guests over nearly every day of the week; on one of the days, I had one set of guests arrive a mere half-hour after another set left. It was a nightmare!**
> 
> **While I finished my TDG marathon quite a while ago, I re-watched The Lone Ranger to get an idea of what Jody was doing in this episode and was quite surprised to realise that neither of the subplots would have happened if not for Tyler. As a result, there's no whoopie cushioning and money-making/karma-earning in this chapter.**


	34. Chapter 34

_Gray_. It was a common enough surname; according to one of those online profiling sites, both Gray and Jackson were prevalent surnames in Pottiswood and, to a lesser extent, Birmingham. Therefore, it was entirely plausible that Jody's sparring partner, Miss Gray, was just another local girl with no connection to her, her brothers or Kingsley Gray and his family. However, because she knew so little about the girl, there was nothing to definitively rule her out as a potential half-sister either. All in all, she had some serious digging to do when she next went to the gym.

"Jody!" Aliyah hissed from across the bench.

"Yeah?" she responded, not looking up from her phone.

"Tyler's been trying to get your attention for, like, the last five minutes!"

She stopped what she was doing just then, proceeding to spot Tyler and his mates on the other side of the quad. The boys appeared to be up to no good, as per usual, but Tyler himself was standing a few steps away from the others, beckoning her over. She muttered an 'I'll be back' to her friends before making her way towards him.

"Hi," she greeted, shoving her phone and hands into her pockets.

"Hi," he replied quietly. "How are you?"

Jody sighed inwardly. She hated the cycle of mundane small talk they'd devolved to following his departure from Ashdene Ridge; the deepest conversation they'd had since was about what they'd had for dinner the previous night. Now, she liked talking about food as much as the next person, especially since she was learning how to cook, but they couldn't go on like this; sometimes, she felt like she was talking to an acquaintance rather than her best friend.

'"I'm alright... What were you up to yesterday?"

What she really meant was 'why haven't you texted me yet?'. Judging by the sudden sheepish expression on his face, he understood her double entendre. "I went down to help Kamal and Mum out with the street food outlets. Basically, I ran out of credit last week and Mum told me that if I helped out with the business every Sunday, she'd get me a new phone on a monthly contract. And she did. It arrived today, actually." He paused, pulling a gold iPhone XS out of his inner blazer pocket. "I've got unlimited data, minutes and texts. What do you think?"

Despite not caring much for overly expensive luxuries, she couldn't deny that she was a tiny bit jealous. Mike and May-Li only bought phones for new care kids who didn't already have one; everyone else had to pay out of their own pockets if they wanted a new one and as a result of the recent cut in allowances, some couldn't even afford top-ups let alone the latest models.

"Uhh, yeah, it's great," she answered, clamping down on her envy. It was hardly Tyler's fault that his mother had the means to get him a new phone. He hadn't even received it for free, though she found it curious that Sally had baulked at the idea of her son mopping floors at Ashdene Ridge but was fine with him working for her husband before he was even sixteen. "You should probably give me your new number."

"I've still got the same number." She nodded slowly. While she now knew why he hadn't texted all week, she still didn't understand why he hadn't visited her. How hard was it for him to walk down a few roads when he had some free time? He'd done it multiple times back when he'd run between the birthday bashes she and his mother had respectively thrown for him. "Where were you yesterday?"

She blinked, taken aback by the otherwise casual question. Telling him about the trials she'd signed up for yesterday and had been deliberating about since last Friday hadn't even crossed her mind once. She was somewhat shocked by the sobering realisation, and a little disheartened too; just ten days ago, he would've been the first person to know. As for telling him about her maybe sister, she had no idea where to start. Before she could even think about how to phrase her answer, the bell rang.

"History," Tyler said dryly, rolling his eyes. "I'll text you later, yeah?"

She smiled weakly and nodded before watching him disappear into the crowded doorway at one end of the path running down the middle of the quad for what felt like the billionth time.

.:. QK .:.

Later that day, Jody found herself at the gym as per usual, only this time she was officially trying out for the regional team and was, therefore, a rival to all of the other hopefuls, including her supposed half-sister. After warming up to engage in a sparring session with the said girl, she approached Brandon, determined to find out what, if anything, he knew about her. After all, he had been the one to reveal that Miss Gray was trying out in the first place.

"Hi Brandon," she began, ignoring the raised brows she received from his mates. They probably thought she was interested in getting back with him and while she didn't fancy confirming that theory, she had to take him aside lest the boys told Miss Gray that 'the other Gray' was asking questions about her. "Can I talk to you?"

Brandon appeared to be a little surprised but nodded, following her to one of the benches. The very same bench they'd had their first proper conversation on, in fact.

"What's up?" he asked kindly. "Do you want to start sparring with me again? I think I've got a lot better since... you know."

Since before they'd started going out. It felt like a lifetime ago. "No," she answered, watching his face fall slightly. She scrambled to rectify herself. "I mean, I'd love to spar with you again but that's not what I wanted to talk about."

"What then?"

"I was just wondering what you know about my sparring partner." He made a bit of a funny face then, prompting her to rack her brain for a less creepy approach. "I want to get to know her but she insists on not telling me her first name. How well can you really know someone if you don't even know that? You know what I mean?"

"Oh right, I get you," he said, chuckling. "But you might be better off asking someone else; I think I heard Bernadette calling her Bella once but I'm not sure."

 _Bella._  It sounded like a good sibling name for Benji. Or the other way round, rather, considering that she was born before said boy. "Oh, so you don't go to school with her or anything?"

Brandon bit his lip before saying, "I go to an all-boys' school, remember?"

Jody blushed, mentally berating herself. He may have only told her that tidbit of information once but what kind of ex-girlfriend forgot something like that? Oh God, what did he think of her?

"Rubbish memory," she muttered, exaggeratedly rolling her eyes at herself. She wished she could just disappear.

"It's okay," he assured her, though she could tell it most definitely wasn't. He probably remembered what school she went to. "She might go to the girls' school if she lives anywhere near me."

She didn't dare ask him which area he lived in. She knew full well that she'd broken up with him just before he was going to introduce her to his parents.

"Yeah," she simply replied, catching sight of 'Bella' entering the gym. She stood up, smiling down at her ex. "Thanks for the help... Let me know when you want to spar, yeah?"

"Will do."

As she walked towards her sparring partner, her mobile phone vibrated in her pocket. She wasted no time in pulling it out, beaming when she saw that she had a message from Tyler. Since she'd recently changed the settings to hide the contents of notifications on her lock screen—Floss had been particularly nosey as of late—she had to unlock her mobile to read it.

_Hey, want 2 come down 2 my place? There's a sick air crash documentary on at 5._

Her first instinct was to grab her gym bag and run out of the door but upon glancing at the girl who was possibly her only living female relative (that she knew of), she quashed the urge as quickly as it came; if she was ever going to determine whether they were related or not, she was going to need more than just a possible name to go on. Besides, she had priorities; the trials were in just over two months and she'd signed up on the self-set condition that she train from Sunday to Friday and do her homework on Saturday.

_I can't. I'm training. Y don't u come down on Saturday after ur shift?_

"Is it the boyfriend?" Miss Gray asked as she strapped her headgear on, her tone reeking of condescension. "The new one, I mean."

Overcome by the familiar need to prove herself, she ignored the beep that indicated Tyler's reply and switched her phone off, proceeding to toss it into her gym bag. If this girl was indeed her sister, she couldn't let her think she was a total loser. 'Bella' Gray already had the love and attention of their father; Jody would be damned if she let the daddy's girl be the best boxer too.

.:. QK .:.

The next few days whittled by in a repetitive manner with her spending every day at the gym, getting to know Miss Gray, and texting Tyler sporadically, usually just before going to bed. However, come Thursday, he abruptly cornered her during lunchtime and asked her why she'd ignored his texts the previous night. She winced, realising that she'd forgotten to reply to him; after turning her phone back on, she'd briefly read his messages before calling May-Li to pick her up but had been too tired to do anything other than shower and have dinner before turning in for the night.

"My eyelids were literally drooping by the time I went to bed, Tyler," she stated truthfully. "I did read the messages though. You still haven't told me why you can't you make it on Saturday. Come on, it'll be like the old times: the two of us hanging out after you come back from work and I come back from boxing. Well, I don't box on Saturdays anymore but same difference."

"It's like you said," he answered. "I'm too tired after a shift to walk down to Ashdene Ridge."

Unable to help herself, she snorted, and the words were out of her mouth before she could even comprehend them: "I'd hate to see what you look like after a couple of hours at the gym!"

His eyebrows nearly flew up into his hairline. "Wow," he uttered, a deep frown forming on his face. "Why don't  _you_  try walking down to my place after a whole four hours of running around doing errands for my boss?"

Her heart leapt up into her throat. "Tyler, I didn't mean—"

"Nah, I think you did," he interjected dryly. "We can't all be like you and Brandon but that doesn't mean I don't work just as hard as you do!"

Her desire to apologise vanished as soon as Brandon's name left his lips. "What's this got to do with Brandon? Why are you bringing him into this?!"

"He's got everything to do with it! You're back with him, aren't you? That's why you've been at the gym like every single day, turning your phone off so that I don't get in the way of you two!"

She exploded with fury. "Back with him?! I'm the one who broke up with him! You know that! And  _I've_  been off with  _you_? Seriously?!"

"Jody!" April hissed in the background. "People are staring! And listening!"

"I don't care!" Jody snapped, staring straight at Tyler with what she hoped was a piercing gaze. "I've been at the gym every day because I'm trying out for the Junior Regional Team and I turn my phone off because my sparring partner—a girl—doesn't like distractions!"

She vaguely heard April muttering something about privacy from somewhere behind her but kept her eyes on Tyler, relishing in the expression on his face as realisation dawned on him. How dare he accuse her of hanging out at the gym just to see a boy? He  _knew_  that she'd started boxing to curb her anger, not pick up a boyfriend.

"You—You never said!" he spluttered, his face growing red. "Since when were you considering making a career out of boxing?"

"I'm not," she responded, though she had to admit to herself that she had been thinking about it a lot lately. College deadlines were fast approaching and she still hadn't decided on A-level choices because she didn't have an affinity for any particular subject, let alone three or four. The college fair she was attending with Sasha next month was her last bet; if she still didn't know what to do after that, she was seriously going to consider boxing full-time. It was why she took her training so seriously. "And how was I supposed to tell you? We never talk properly anymore!"

"We text!" he exclaimed weakly, throwing his arms out. "I know it's not the same as talking face to face but what more can we do? I'm free after school but you're not. You're free on Saturday but I'm not... I can't do Sunday either."

"Neither can I," she said flatly, her heart sinking. "We're just going to have to carry on as we are!"

At this rate, she was never going to be able to tell him about her latest family drama.

.:. QK .:.

"Focus, Gray!"

Jody blinked, rolling her shoulders and preparing to throw another punch. Despite resolving to put her issues with Tyler aside until after she left the gym, snippets of their lunchtime conversation, or rather screaming match, kept seeping back into her mind, flooding her with a flurry of emotion. She was disappointed in him for degrading her boxing to man-watching, ashamed at herself for thinking so lowly of his work but, most of all, she was distraught at losing her partner in crime. She nearly felt as if she was thinking of two random kids when she reminisced about the boy and girl who'd conspired together to nick Gina's poorly hidden biscuit tin.

Swinging at her sparring partner, she couldn't help but feel, for the first time, that she'd made a horrible mistake by allowing Tyler to go back to his mother. Although she couldn't be sure of a lot of things between them, one thing she knew for certain was that he would've stayed had she not essentially bullied him into accepting Sally's offer. Knowing she only had herself to blame, she didn't even try to block Miss Gray's punch.

"What the hell are you doing?!" 'Bella' barked. "If you don't get your act together, I'll have to swap sparring partners!"

"Go ahead," Jody spat, her cheek smarting as she ripped her boxing gloves off. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a few onlookers scattered outside the ring. "But I doubt anyone will want to since you're practically broadcasting"—she almost laughed sardonically at her word choice—"how bad of a partner I am."

'Bella' looked around for a few seconds before uncharacteristically sighing in defeat. She turned back to Jody. "Right," she started through gritted teeth. "If I can't get rid of you, then I might as well fix your damn problem so that you can stop moping around!" She snapped her head towards the uninvited audience. "What are you all staring at?!"

The small crowd almost immediately dispersed and Jody followed her maybe-sister out of the ring, secretly impressed by the girl's display of... whatever it was. Pursing her lips, she lowered herself onto a spot on the bench next to her partner. "So..."

"So, what exactly is it that's eating you up?" she asked roughly, not even bothering to pretend that she cared. "Is your boyfriend being a right dick? Is your family being shitty?"

Jody's eyes widened at the profanities. 'Bella' sure sounded like she'd been raised by someone like Kingsley Gray; Kingsley  _Jackson_ , who'd been raised by their father for at least eleven years, spoke the same filthy way. Then again, maybe his potty mouth was just down to their equally disgusting mother, and maybe 'Bella's' was down to hers.

"No and no," she answered dryly. "I don't have a boyfriend and I don't live with my family so..."

'Bella' turned to her, visibly surprised. "You live on your own?"

She laughed under her breath. "I wish." 'Bella' gave her a pointed look. Oh, why not? Maybe opening up about her family situation would, in turn, get 'Bella' to do the same. "I live in a children's home. Been in care for nearly eight years now. My brother lives with his girlfriend who doesn't want him to be around me, and my dad doesn't know me."

If 'Bella' had an inkling that her father might also be Jody's father, she didn't let it show. Not that Jody had provided enough information for that to happen, anyway. She wasn't quite sure that Gray's kids even knew that he had another set of children out there. They probably didn't. After all, what kind of parents would admit to cheating and homewrecking to start a family together?

"Well, what is it then?"

Apparently, 'Bella' was not interested in talking about her family. Or Jody's.

"It's my best mate," she confessed. "He moved out of the home to live with his mum and stepdad, and now I barely see him because I'm always here on weekdays and he works on weekends."

"Is that it?" Bella questioned, her voice dripping with disgust. Jody merely nodded, prompting the other girl to scowl. "I told you not to think about boys too much. Were you not listening?"

"He's not just any boy. He's been in my life since I got placed into care. I miss him. I was used to seeing him every day for years and now I only see him at school."

"Alright, well if he's really that important to you, why don't you just use one of the weekdays to see him?"

Jody floundered. "But my traini—"

"Training? Pining more like." She opened her mouth to clarify that she and Tyler were just friends but the other girl continued. "You're not helping anyone by sitting here dreaming about him, least of all me."

"I'm not dreaming about him," she insisted, her face growing hot. "We're just friends."

'Bella' looked at her as if she were stupid. "Yeah, right..."

"Shove off,  _Bella_."

She frowned. "What did you just call me? My name isn't Bella! I'm not some brain dead vampire lover!"

"I've got to call you something," Jody stated matter-of-factly. It was nice to know that another girl hated Twilight as much as she did. "I can't just call you Gray; it's too weird." She received no response. "Bella it is then."

'Bella' flared her nostrils before closing her eyes. "Fine," she growled, her eyes snapping open again. "Call me Amy."

Jody refrained from smiling. She didn't know how Brandon had managed to mistake 'Amy' for 'Bella', but it mattered not. She'd made one crucial breakthrough during one short conversation. Who knew what she'd find out next time?


	35. Chapter 35

"I can't remember the last time we did this," Jody said as she set her tray down on the table, across from Tyler. She shrugged her bag off and sat down, preparing to dig into the only meal on the school menu worth mentioning.

In the end, she'd decided that if she couldn't see him on Saturdays, she'd have to spend some of her lunchtimes with him instead. Forty minutes every other day or so was still nothing compared to the time they used to spend together and certainly nowhere near enough but she had to take what she got. A niggling voice in the back of her head reminded her of Amy's advice but she ignored it; as her rival, Amy Gray was not to be trusted. She'd most likely suggested that Jody cut down on training hours because she wanted her to fall behind, not because she actually thought it was a solution to her problems.

"Probably Year Six," Tyler replied wryly, popping a piece of battered cod into his mouth with one of his bare hands.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste, piercing her own battered cod the proper way: with a knife and fork. "Tyler Lewis, if only Mike and May-Li could see you right now."

He looked up at her, grinning. "But they can't. We can do what we want."

"You mean  _you_  can," she corrected. "If any of the snitches w— _I_  live with see me eating like you, I'll be getting a lecture from Mike and May-Li both as soon as I get home." A crazy thought suddenly occurred to her. "Are you allowed to eat like that at home?"

He nearly choked and she scrambled to help him, shoving a plastic cup of water towards him. "Hell no!" he exclaimed, breathing heavily. "Mum would kill me if I did. When it's just me and Kam though..."

She bit back a smile; she could already imagine Tyler and his stepdad acting like a right pair of lads whenever Sally was out of sight and/or earshot. Maybe she'd get to see such behaviour for herself one day.

The next ten minutes or so passed in silence as they ate their fish and chips and Jody tried not to take notice of the time on the clock hanging on the wall in front of her. After putting their trays and dirty dishes away, they walked out to the fields where some of Tyler's mates were playing football. They yelled at him to join but he loudly declined, continuing to stroll with her, and she figured that this was as good a time as any to update him on her family drama.

"So..." she started, clasping her hands together. "Do you remember when I told you that Gray has another daughter?" He nodded. "Well, I think she's my sparring partner."

All of a sudden, he stopped walking, and so did she. "The one who's the reason I can't text you when you're at the gym?" She giggled before replying in the positive. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, she's got the same last name as me and..." she trailed off, realising only then that she didn't have much to go on.

"Is that it?" he asked, blinking rapidly. "She didn't say anything about her parents or...?"

Sighing, she resumed her walk. Of course, he thought she was silly. What else was he going to think when even she knew she sounded ridiculous? There were plenty of Grays at school alone and she'd never so much as given any of them a second thought, not even to wonder if they could be her distant cousins. What was so special about Amy that had her jumping to conclusions and actually wanting to get to know her better? She doubted it was her shining personality; the girl radiated unfriendliness with her aloof manner and frank but often cutting rebuttals. She really couldn't make sense of it.

"I know it's stupid," she began as he appeared by her side once more. "I can't even explain it but I just have this feeling. And... and who's to say that I'm wrong? Alex saw his mum once and immediately knew it was her. He's even got a half-sister of his own." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him purse his lips and when he didn't say anything, she turned to him. "What is it? Why aren't you saying something?"

"I don't think you can compare your sparring partner to Alex's mum," he answered tentatively. "He knew she was his mum because he remembered her from when he was little. Kind of like how you recognised Gray. But you've never seen his daughter before, so it's not the same thing."

Except she had, that time she'd passed Gray's house on the way to a date with Brandon. Only, she couldn't recall the girl's face; all she remembered was the image of the girl laughing with her father—their father—and the gut wrenching sensation that accompanied it.

"It doesn't mean anything. Alice turned out to be Alex's sister. Amy could still turn out to be mine." She didn't know who she was attempting to convince anymore; each time Tyler opened his mouth on the issue, she lost conviction.

"Jodes," he spoke softly, his eyes shining with concern. "I'm not going to try and stop you from finding out if she's your sister; I know you're going to do it anyway." She laughed under her breath but he didn't join in, remaining serious. "Just don't get in too deep. I don't want to see you hurt again."

A lump formed in her throat. Her family had hurt her far too many times to count but she couldn't, for the life of her, leave them alone, especially Gray's side. It was absurd; thanks to her birth certificate, she wasn't even sure if he was her father. "I won't be."

.:. QK .:.

_U were right. The site's been taken down._

Jody sighed, texting a 'thanks' in response. After confiding in Tyler about Amy Gray, she'd asked him for help; she'd had trouble locating the site they'd used to find out where Gray lived which she'd hoped to use to confirm that Amy lived at that same address. The site being taken down was a setback, though not a massive one because it apparently didn't really work for children anyway, but she was still determined to uncover the truth, whatever it was. Unfortunately, she wasn't going to make much progress today; as per her own mental agreement, she was going to have to finish the entire week's homework by the end of the day.

"Jody!" Taz's voice carried down the hallway. Said girl looked up from her science homework just in time to see her youngest housemate appear in the doorway to her room. Damn. She knew should've closed the door and put a 'DO NOT DISTURB' sign up.

"What is it?" she grumbled, rubbing her eyes. She'd severely underestimated her workload. "I've got a ton of homework to get through."

"I need your help," the younger girl replied, jumping on the balls of her feet. "I want to make an indoor rainbow for Sid."

"Why?" Jody asked incredulously. "Last time I checked, you didn't even like him. You wouldn't let him go bowling with you last week."

"I didn't go either; I didn't have enough money!" Taz complained, as if it was sufficient explanation. "It's not fair! Floss still hasn't got our allowances back!"

"She probably won't be able to," Jody muttered, wincing at the volume of Taz's whiny voice. God, she probably sounded like that when she was ten as well. "Anyway, I'm sorry, but I'm way too busy. Ask Chloe. She likes all that creative stuff, doesn't she? And she loves helping people. It's a win-win."

"I can't; I need to do it upstairs because I want it to be a surprise."

Rather conveniently, Finn, arguably the most artistic member of the household, was off hiding in the attic reading comics, and Charlie, who would've been the next obvious choice, was down at the police station doing last minute work experience with Ryan. After those two, Floss was the best bet but she was going through a trumpet phase like Tyler had four years ago; it was best not to disturb her.

"Candi-Rose, then?" Taz crossed her arms, making Jody frown. "Bird?" she tried. No response. "Jay?" Taz scoffed. "Anyone who isn't me?!"

"Nope, it has to be you."

Oh, of course. How could she think that the universe would let her have a break? "Why? I've got a mountain of work to do!"

"Because you made me feel welcome here," Taz answered swiftly. "You were really nice, and because you made me feel welcome, I made Charlie feel welcome. And now I want to make Sid feel welcome."

Jody swallowed deeply, feeling oddly touched. Who knew that a ten year old could say something so... meaningful? In any case, Taz had definitely learnt some skills of manipulation from Ryan because Jody found herself closing her homework booklet and putting her pen down within seconds.

"We're going to need some paint."

A half hour later, Jody scowled when Alex and Jay burst into her room, thereby ruining the surprise for Sid. She'd wanted to do this properly, not least because she'd given up precious homework time in order to do it, but when she saw the awestruck expression on Sid's face, none of that mattered as much anymore. She couldn't help but smile as Sid pulled her into a hug and thanked her and Taz profusely.

Ever since Tyler had left, she'd forgotten just how rewarding being at home could be. No one could ever take his place in her heart, of course, but the DG lot were not a bad bunch of kids—even Ryan had his moments. She'd been taking them for granted, she realised, especially with the way she'd actively been trying to find out more about Amy when she should've been spending time with them. How long had it been since she'd had a proper chat with Charlie or watched a rom-com with Candi-Rose? Too long to know.

Her homework was her priority right now but if she managed to finish with time to spare, she wouldn't turn her nose up at weekly film night, even if meant watching a movie she'd already watched a million times over.

.:. QK .:.

"Now, that was more like it," Amy praised, following one of Jody's more successful spars. "I take it you didn't come in yesterday because you took my advice and decided to see your mate?"

Jody took a generous gulp from her water bottle before answering. "His name's Tyler. And no, I didn't see him yesterday. I was actually at home all day, doing my homework and hanging out with some of my other friends who live there."

"Well, I don't care what you do as long as you don't get all mopey again..."

How blunt. Not for the first time, she wondered how Amy managed to fit her studies and social life around her boxing. Where was the time? According to Brandon, who came in most Saturdays, Amy was always there, meaning she spent every single day at the gym without fail. Not so long ago, Jody had thought that was how it was supposed to be but after realising just how much homework Year Eleven teachers liked to give out, she was grateful to May-Li for talking some sense into her; even in the absence of homework, being at the gym every day was unhealthy, if only because it meant the person in question didn't have a life beyond exercising.

"Were you here yesterday?" she asked, already knowing the answer. "What did you do?"

"I sparred with one of the other girls," Amy responded, her eyes quickly flitting to one of the girls on the other side of the gym. "Mind you, she's not much of a challenge. She was busy flirting with her boyfriend half the time."

As if on cue, the girl practically pounced on a boy around her age, presumably her boyfriend, and started kissing him. Jody quickly averted her gaze, her face growing hot. Brandon had kissed her like that once, towards the end of their relationship, and she'd found the experience so underwhelming that she'd proceeded to avoid letting it happen again; on one occasion, she'd turned her head at the last minute, causing him to kiss her cheek instead. To his credit, he'd taken the hint and every kiss afterwards had always been on the cheek or the forehead.

"Hey!" Amy yelled abruptly. "Stop sucking face! No one wants to see that!"

Like a schoolgirl witnessing a wrongdoing, Jody quickly scanned her surroundings to see if there was a responsible adult around, her eyes landing on Bernadette who'd just walked in through the double doors. She looked back to the young couple who were now innocently holding hands. Had she and Tyler started a relationship while still living in the same care home, they wouldn't even have been able to do that much without getting into trouble. How did Alex and Charlie manage it?

" _She_  won't make it very far," Amy said smugly. "Don't know why she signed up. It's a joke."

Jody frowned. Dismissing an opponent solely because she had a PDA problem was harsh. She'd initially brushed Amy's aversion to men off as part of her no distractions work ethic but now she wasn't so sure; the venom in her voice said otherwise. "Why do you say that?"

Amy turned to her, appearing to be surprised. "I told you before: real strong women don't need men."

"But we all need someone, don't we? Not just women; men as well. Someone to talk to, someone to care about... that sort of thing."

"I've got my mum and my brother for that. I don't  _need_  anyone else."

Her mum and her brother? As in Gray's partner, and son Benji? Jody raised her eyebrow, wondering how much more she could get out of Amy regarding her family. "What about your dad?"

Amy scoffed, picking one of her boxing gloves back up. "What about him?"

Before Jody could ask any further questions, her lithe sparring partner began talking about their next training exercise. Losing the gumption to speak further about the subject, Jody tightly pursed her lips and did as she was told, a crucial question doing the rounds in the back of her mind: what had gone wrong between Gray and his other daughter?


	36. Chapter 36

One Wednesday afternoon, a sneeze ripped through the school library, disrupting Jody's delicate thought process. Looking up from the German paragraphs she'd been tasked with memorising for her speaking exam, she immediately cast her eyes towards the source of the wretched sound, a boy who couldn't have been older than twelve, and hissed at him. He cowered and sniffed, shifting his chair away from her, and she rolled her eyes before getting back to work.

GCSE prep was getting to her, and it was like none of her friends, even Tyler, understood what she was going through. They all studied after school or during the entire weekend but she didn't have that option; training for the trials occupied ninety per cent of her so-called free-time, and the other ten was reserved for her fellow housemates at Ashdene Ridge. She'd been foolish to think that one day a week would be enough to cover the study a GCSE student needed to undertake. As a result of her oversight, she'd had to spend three lunchtimes in a row catching up on what she hadn't had the time to cover on Saturday and thus hadn't been able to hang out with Tyler; she'd spent all of her twenty-minute breaktimes so far with Aliyah, April and Beth. She sighed. Only last week she'd thought she'd got the hang of this study/train/socialise lark but she couldn't have been more wrong; every time she talked to her school friends, she discovered that she'd missed out on something that'd happened the previous lunch and therefore found herself unable to understand most of the inside jokes they cracked. They filled her in on what she'd missed, of course, but it just wasn't the same.

Amy wasn't letting up either. Beyond that one mention, she hadn't spoken of her father or family again and didn't seem to be inclined towards opening up to Jody any more than she already had (which wasn't much, to be honest). The girl was a lean, mean, fighting machine if there ever was one and appeared to prefer not talking about anything other than boxing at all, unless, of course, she felt the need to make snarky comments about the other girls and their boyfriends. Jody hated to think of what Amy would say if she saw her and Tyler together. Luckily, such a thing would never happen; he'd never shown any interest in going to the gym, and what little exercise he did was via P.E. or one of those home exercise apps. She shook her head. There was no reason she should care what Amy thought of her—she didn't even care what _Luke_  thought of her—but she couldn't stand the thought of the girl thinking, or rather knowing, that she was in love with Tyler.

On the subject of her brother, she'd been experiencing nagging guilt since learning Amy's last name; she was now not only withholding their father's whereabouts from him but was also keeping the possibility of them having a half-sister to herself. She'd thought about telling him the truth many times these last couple of weeks but the truth was that she didn't know where to start. To begin with, she didn't even know if Gray was her father... She couldn't care less about being only half related to Kingsley—in fact, she'd welcome the possibility if only it didn't mean that Luke would also be her half-brother—but if she were to find out that Luke was related to her solely through the Jacksons, the side of her family that she'd rejected and hated with a passion, she'd feel like she'd lost a part of herself. While Luke would never force her to get a DNA test or anything, the truth would inevitably come out and get back to her in some shape or form once he got back in contact with Gray. Still, come what may, she couldn't continue being secretive.

The longer she kept her brother in the dark, the angrier he was going to be when she eventually fessed up. She ought to tell him everything when she next saw him. If she ever saw him again, that was; after she'd rebuffed his last invitation, he hadn't suggested another meet-up. She hadn't realised it at the time but by rejecting him without suggesting another date or expressing any interest in rescheduling, she'd given Millie the ammunition to turn Luke against her. For all she knew, Millie had persuaded her brother not to bother with her again.

Even if she was to see Luke again, Millie was still a problem; Jody very much doubted that Luke would want to discuss their family matters in front of the girlfriend he'd taken so long to tell that he had a sister, let alone a deadbeat father. Heck, Millie didn't even know that there was a jailbird brother! What if she 'accidentally' overheard them mentioning him as well as some of their family's other dark secrets, including Luke's own criminal history? No, that wouldn't do; for all that Jody disapproved of Millie, she didn't want to be involved in causing their break-up in any way. She would have to meet Luke away from his home and girlfriend.

As soon as that thought crossed her mind, though, it all came back to the same golden question: between the gym and studying, where was the time?

.:. QK .:.

The crossing alarm sounded, jolting Jody out of her stupor and reminding her of her present whereabouts. She glanced at the bright green man on the crossing box before walking across the road, wondering how she'd fallen into this perpetual cycle of zoning out and overthinking. She pursed her lips. It didn't matter; she'd be alright once she got to the gym and into the ring.

Continuing down the route to her destination, she was halfway down the next street when she felt a sudden twinge in her lower abdomen.  _Oh no._  In all her months as a gym member, this had to happen on the one day she'd had to walk to the gym; May-Li had been called away on a family emergency and the weekly allowance was still far too low to allow for a bus ticket. To top it all off, she knew for a fact that she didn't have any supplies in her bag—she never did! Having little choice, she begrudgingly turned around and headed to the closest pharmacy.

As soon as she stepped foot into the pharmacy, she headed straight for the sanitary section. There was a reason she preferred to rely on the stash of supplies May-Li kept in the bathroom cupboard; she disliked hobbling around with a packet of sanitary products in tow. Grabbing the cheapest pack, she quickly made her way to the counter and paid for the damn thing. When she turned around to leave, however, she froze.

_Sally._

By the time her brain started working again, it was already too late to pretend she hadn't seen her and escape: Sally was looking right at her.

"Oh, hello, Jody!" Sally greeted, turning towards her with a smile on her face. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, hi. I just... had to get something," Jody answered lamely, quickly closing her bag to conceal what she'd bought. Sally narrowed her eyes just then and it took everything Jody had not to rudely bolt out of there without so much as another word. "What about you?" She immediately winced at the dumb question. What else would Sally Lewis (or was it Hameed, now?) be doing in a pharmacy? "Sorry; don't answer that."

"It's okay," Sally assured. "How are you? Tyler's told me you're so busy that he hasn't been able to get a word in all week."

"Err, yeah," Jody replied, the all too familiar guilt welling up in her chest. "I've just had a lot of homework to do during lunches, and I've been training after school for the regional boxing team. I was actually on my way to the gym before I had to come in here."

"Oh, you're not ill, are you?"

"No, I just felt a little... dizzy."

It was a silly thing to lie about, really, but she wasn't about to admit to the truth in the centre of a crowded pharmacy. Having to buy her supplies from a male cashier had been bad enough. Besides, the idea of a woman she'd known since she was a child knowing that she had periods seemed downright wrong, even though it was a perfectly normal process.

"Oh?" Sally let out, looking at her strangely. "Well, I hope you get better... Why don't you come round after school on one of your days off? You could stay for dinner. I'm sure Tyler would love to see you."

Days off? One day off was impossible, let alone days. Jody briefly considered explaining to Sally what she had to Tyler about how unavailable she was but ultimately decided against it; she couldn't keep going through life blatantly shooting invitations down. She wouldn't have any free time after school for the foreseeable future but Sally didn't have to know that. "Next time I'm free, I guess."

Sally smiled and said she was looking forward to it, looking as if she was about to add something when a girl brushed past them, wailing down her mobile about potentially being pregnant. Jody stared after the girl, who hadn't even uttered a sorry, wondering if every woman/girl facing an unexpected pregnancy acted that extra when it came to buying a test.

"Jody?" Said girl turned back towards Sally, having momentarily forgotten she was still there. "Is there something Tyler's keeping from me? Something I should know?"

Jody clasped her hands together, trying not to let her discomfort show. Why was Sally looking at her like that? As if she'd done something wrong? She almost felt like she was standing in Mike's office after a prank that'd backfired, at the receiving end of his piercing gaze.

"I don't know what you mean."

Sally nodded. "I thought you might say that. Look, Tyler's been a little quiet these last few days as if he's hiding something from me. He won't tell me when I ask—he insists that he's fine—but I just know that something's bothering him, and because he's such a doting son, I wonder if he's keeping it from me, whatever it is, because he feels he can't tell me in case I become stressed or worried. It would be so like him to do that."

"It would," Jody agreed, "but he hasn't said anything to me. I mean I know he's a little stressed about college applications but all of us are. It's definitely not something he's losing sleep over or anything."

"So you haven't noticed him behaving strangely?"

"No." How could she have? She'd seen him across the canteen once and in the hallways twice; none of those encounters had been long enough to exchange greetings in, let alone notice any strange behaviours.

Sally looked taken aback. "Really?"

Jody glanced down at her hands. "Really."

There was an awkward pause and then a 'hmm' from Sally but she didn't make a move to leave and Jody had the suspect feeling that the reason for that was that the older woman was staring at her. Remembering why she'd even stepped foot into the pharmacy in the first place, she proceeded to politely make her excuses before leaving.

.:. QK .:.

_Wuu2? x  
I just saw ur mum in the pharmacy._

Instead of turning her mobile off and chucking it into her bag as per usual, Jody put it on vibrate and slipped it into her pocket. Judging from the look on Amy's face, she wasn't happy with the decision but Jody didn't care; gaining Amy's good opinion was going to have to come second to being there for Tyler, especially since she hadn't been able to speak to him over the last few days.

"Don't give me that look," she told Amy. "I  _have_  to have my phone on me today."

Amy jerked an eyebrow. "Whatever. You better not stop halfway through a sesh to check it."

Normally, Jody would've ignored such a comment or simply rolled her eyes and moved on but that wasn't going to cut it this time. "If I get a notification, I'm going to have to. That's sort of the point of having it in my pocket in the first place."

"What? No way! I'm not going to have you slacking off just so you can text your mates!"

"This is important. I'm checking in on a mate I haven't been able to talk to lately. His mum told me she's worried about him and—"

"If she was a proper mother, she would've sorted him out herself instead of getting you to do it."

Jody frowned at the unkind statement. What did Amy know? If she was to be believed, her father was just as much a disappointment as Jody's was (if he weren't the very same man) but she'd had her mother around her entire life; she hadn't had to grapple with the concept of mental illness at a young age or face rejection from her own mother for doing the right thing. She didn't know squat.

"She  _is_  a proper mother," Jody snapped, holding up a pair of punching mitts. "She's a right sight better than mine, that's for sure."

"And?" Amy prompted, sticking her boxing gloves on. "What's that got to do with anything? Just because your mum's a loser, it doesn't mean that every other woman on earth is decent."

"No, it doesn't, but just because your mum's such a saint, it doesn't mean everyone else is  _improper_."

"I didn't sa—"

"And my mum's not a loser. She  _was_  a loser, but she isn't anymore. She's dead."

Amy's eyes widened. "I'm sorry."

"No you're not," Jody said, without missing a beat. "You're just saying that. You couldn't actually care less."

To her credit, Amy didn't try to deny it. She didn't even get angry. Rather, she smiled in a patronising manner before saying, "Well, if you were really that worried about your mate, you would've taken the day off to go and see him. Like I told you to."

It didn't surprise Jody that Amy knew Tyler was the mate in question; despite her efforts, she didn't exactly hide her feelings for him very well, at least not at the gym. Boxing had a way of bringing her emotions out, good or bad. She gritted her teeth together.

"Enough talk," she growled, holding the punching mitts up higher. "Let's just get on with it. That's what you want, isn't it?"

As if nothing unseemly had been said between them, Amy buckled down and poised herself to strike. "Let's."


	37. Chapter 37

The harsh blaring of a trumpet assaulted Jody's ears for what felt like the billionth time that week as Floss joined her on the sofa with her noisy phone in tow. Sticking her pinkies into her ears, she glared at Ryan who was sat on the other sofa in front of the coffee table, playing a board game with Finn.

"Nice one, Ryan!" she spat, covering her ears. "Your good side just had to come out when it came to Floss and her trumpets. Couldn't you have helped someone else out? Like literally anyone else?"

Ryan rolled his eyes. "You mean help you with your homework? Sure, I can do that. For a price."

"I've already done all of my homework,  _thanks_. I don't need your kind of help."

"Tyler's here!"

Jody dropped her hands and turned to see Jay entering the room with a spring in his steps, followed by Bird, Tyler, a conspicuously dressed woman and a teenage girl. Barely keeping herself from running up to her best friend and hugging him in front of everyone, she merely stood up and faced him, noting that he was wearing a new grey suit. As her initial euphoria waned, she blinked in confusion. Wasn't he supposed to be at work right now? Granted, he had texted her that morning about something he had to tell her in person but she'd expected him to show up in the evening or on a completely different day; she certainly hadn't anticipated him showing up before lunch on a Saturday with an entourage of randoms, much less with a determined look on his face.

Her question was soon answered: introducing the woman as his boss, Tyler explained that he had Lethal G, a famous Pottiswood-born rapper, waiting outside to be interviewed and that he needed everyone's help to pull the operation off. Well, everyone's except hers; he dispensed tasks to everyone else in the room, even his boss, but didn't say a single word to her. In fact, he didn't even seem to notice her presence.

Feeling strangely out of place as the others got to work, she self consciously glanced around the room, confused by Tyler's behaviour. Zany schemes were not his thing anymore and while he'd had a bit of a wobble when he'd egged Gray's house with her, secretly interviewing a grime MC on live radio in the attic of his former care home was a little too much, even for him. Moreover, she'd always been his first port of call in the past—his partner in crime—so why hadn't he asked her for her help this time?

"Ty, are you sure you're feeling alright?" she asked, confidently approaching him. "Cos you're acting pretty weird."

"Must be a good influence," the teenage girl spoke up from his right side, a nerve-grating smile on her face.

Jody raised an eyebrow, having forgotten the other girl was there, and looked her up and down. She wasn't surprised to find that the girl, who didn't look a day over sixteen, was dressed like the popular girls from school who went to house parties and slept around. "Or a bad one."

The girl's smile dropped as quickly as it had come. "Sorry, who are you?"

"Who am I?" Jody repeated incredulously.

Who was  _she_? Who did she think she was, butting into a conversation that didn't concern her? Moreover, why wasn't Tyler saying anything? Jody allowed her eyes to drift towards him to see that he was staring back at her with a tired look in his eyes and quickly realised that he wasn't inclined to intervene, not even to stop a potential fight, and as the girl sidled up to him with a sense of entitlement, she suddenly recalled the message he'd sent her earlier in the day.

She nearly laughed. How could she have been so stupid? Just because she liked him enough for things not to work out between her and a perfectly nice guy, it didn't mean that it was the same vice versa. It couldn't, could it, not when he'd fallen for one of his colleagues after a mere few weeks away from Ashdene Ridge? A mere few weeks away from  _her_?

Swallowing her disappointment, she cast him one last glance, as if daring him to explain, before turning on her heel and fleeing from the lounge, not wanting to see him with someone else for a moment longer. As expected, he didn't come after her; rather, his new girlfriend audibly stopped him.

.:. QK .:.

The longer she thought about it, the more it made sense. Feelings needed time to catch and as things were, Tyler spent more time with that girl than he did with her; he saw the girl every Saturday for at least four hours but he only saw Jody for a grand total of a few minutes per week. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he'd become put out by her distance and had sought company elsewhere: such was human nature. She could hardly blame him for taking a liking to a girl who could actually be there for him. That didn't mean it hurt any less, though. After all, since her break-up with Brandon, she'd begun to dream about a future with Tyler, the sort of future she'd looked forward to with her family as a naive child.

"Jody?" said Sasha, her voice crackling through Jody's phone. "I think I lost you."

"Oh, I'm still here," Jody responded, trying to remember what she and Sasha had been talking about before she'd zoned off. "So, did you get your portfolio ready?"

"Umm, not yet? We've still got a month left so I'm going to be adding a few more pieces, but I already told you that... like five minutes ago."

Jody ran a hand over her face, feeling guilty. Sasha didn't deserve only half of her attention, especially when they hadn't spoken in a while. "Right. Sorry. What  _were_  we talking about?"

"Okay, what is it?" Sasha demanded, and Jody could just hear the small girl putting her hands on her hips. "Something's going on over there, isn't it?"

"It's nothing."

"Yeah, right. Now tell me."

"It's alright, honestly. I've got it all sorted out."

What was there to talk about? She was Tyler's best friend before being his nearly-girlfriend so she'd have to accept his choice of girlfriend with her head held high, whether she liked it or not. Besides, telling Sasha about the entire ordeal would just be embarrassing and uncomfortable; after Mike's wedding, she and Candi-Rose had reverted to their earlier belief that Jody and Tyler were made for each other. Jody didn't want to prove Sasha wrong. She almost didn't want to prove  _herself_  wrong; knowing that Tyler liked someone else was one thing but saying the words out loud was quite another.

"Wait. Has that idiot Ryan done something? Like blackmail you? Or frame you?"

It suddenly occurred to Jody just how wide the disconnect between what went on at Ashdene Ridge and how much ex-residents knew about said matters was; Sasha and Tyler had no real way of knowing what was happening in her home life unless she told them and thus had no way of helping if she kept her mouth shut. By the same logic, she had no way of knowing what was happening in Tyler's life either. Maybe, if she'd made more time for him, she wouldn't have been so shocked by the existence of his new girl.

"Nah, it's not him," she finally replied, trying to sound light-hearted. "His good side actually came out last week. You should've seen it; it was almost scary."

"Wow. Okay, you can tell me all about that later but right now, you're going to tell me what's been bothering you."

Jody sighed. If anything, Sasha was relentless; if she didn't find out now, she'd find out some other way, perhaps through Candi-Rose or Tyler himself. It was best to just come out with it.

So she did.

"Sash? Aren't you going to say anything?"

"If could whack you round the head right now, I would!"

"Excuse me?!"

"Tyler hasn't actually said anything, has he?" Sasha asked. "He hasn't told you that he likes this girl or that he doesn't like you anymore. Actually, he hasn't said anything about his personal life at all, at least not recently, so why do you think he's into someone else?"

"Because of that message I just told you about! He said we had to talk; that he's been meaning to tell me something in person. This must be it. He's too nice to dump someone by text or phone call; that's what Sophie did to him, and he hated it. Oh, and I ran into his mum last week, in the pharmacy, and she told me that he's been acting all weird at home, like something's bothering him. He's probably been worrying about how to let me down gently..."

"What were you doing in the pharmacy?"

Typical Sasha: picking up some random detail and running with it. "I was getting tampons, on my way to the gym. It was an emergency. I quickly chucked them in my bag just before she could see, though; imagine how weird it would've been if she saw me with them. I've known her since I was eleven. Still, at least it was her and not someone else. I mean, I could've run into Luke's girlfriend buying a pregnancy test or something."

The thought gave her chills. Millie already had her claws in Luke; a baby would make him completely hers. Hopefully, things would never come to that.

"Wait. Hold up. You saw Tyler's mum?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but you saw her in a pharmacy, a place where people buy pregnancy tests, and you hid something in your bag, right in front of her. Now, if you saw Luke's girlfriend in the pharmacy and she did the exact same thing, what would you think?"

The point Sasha was trying to get across quickly dawned on Jody. "Oh shit."

"Mhm," Sasha let out. "Maybe that's what he wants to talk to you about. Maybe his mum asked him if she's going to be a grandmother."

"But why would he need to  _see_  me to talk to me about that? And what would he say, anyway?"

"He'd ask if it's true."

"Sasha!" Jody exclaimed, blood rapidly rushing to her cheeks. She was glad she was having this conversation in her room, with the door closed, rather than somewhere else for everyone, including Tyler, to hear. "There's no way it's true!"

"If you say so. I only said it because we're legal now."

" _You're_  legal," she corrected. "He's still fifteen and so am I! Besides, it's not something I would rush into, even if I was  _legal_."

Sasha laughed. "Okay, okay. I was wrong about how far the two of you have gone but I'm still right when I say that you've got no clue whether what you're thinking is true. You've got to talk to him about it."

"I suppose..."

"And even if you are right, you can't give up so easily."

"What?"

"Jody, we all ship you two together for a reason. If she's totally wrong for him, and let's be honest, she will be, then you've got to fight for him."

A childish part of her wanted to ask why she should fight for him when he hadn't fought for her after Brandon had first asked her out but she kept her mouth shut; she didn't want to sound anymore clueless than she already did. Besides, Sasha seemed to have a pretty juvenile view of relationships herself. If there was one thing that Jody had learnt, it was that interfering in other's relationships was not the way to set things right.

"He's the only one who can decide who's right for him, Sash. It's up to him. If he wants to be with her, I won't stop him."

She wouldn't. No matter how much she wanted to.

.:. QK .:.

Tyler ended up knocking on her door sometime after Lethal G's private performance following lunch, and she quietly let him in, putting on a brave face. Walking back to her desk, she closed the laptop and asked him to sit down. He didn't, giving her the impression that he wasn't planning on staying very long. Maybe he had a date.

"Has Graham left?" she asked, wringing her wrists. "And your boss?"

"Yeah," he answered. "She's going to drop him off to his hotel and then she'll go back to the radio station. With Piper." Piper. Nice name. A name she was going to be hearing a lot from now on, perhaps? "How have you been, anyway? I'm sorry about earlier; what with the interview and everything, I was too stressed to talk to you properly."

Yet his stress hadn't prevented him from talking to everyone else, even Ryan. She didn't know what to make of that. Nevertheless, she good-naturedly replied, "I'm alright. How are you?"

"I'm fine," he said with a nod, though he didn't sound very sincere. He scratched the stretch of skin behind his ear, appearing to be uncomfortable. "Look, I've been meaning to tell you something. I wasn't sure how you'd take it so I stalled a lot but I can't keep it in anymore."

"You met someone else," she interjected, looking down at her feet as she braced herself against the desk with one hand. "I get it. You don't have to explain or anything."

Time seemed to stop just then as he didn't say anything and she peered up to see him regarding her in wide-eyed confusion. She faltered, falling into her desk chair. She didn't understand. Had he been planning to tell her indirectly or something? Or not at all? Or was he just surprised that she already knew?

After a few more seconds of tense silence, he finally spoke, "What do you mean I've met someone else?"

"Piper," she responded quickly, watching as his eyebrows knitted together. "You met her at work and now you want to be with her. Right?"

"Wrong!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms out. "Jody, there's no way I'd meet someone else. If that was possible, then it would've happened when you were still with Brandon!"

Her heart skipped a beat, and she had to force herself to maintain eye contact with him. They'd never spoken about this before. "B—but it did. You went out with Hannah."

He blushed, averting his gaze. "That was me trying to get over you. It obviously didn't work." He leant back against the closed door, sighing. "I'm so stupid sometimes."

"You're not stupid," she breathed, the corners of her lips curving upwards as butterflies wreaked havoc inside her stomach. How long had she waited to hear these words from him? How long had  _he_  waited to hear them from  _her_? " _I'm_  the one who got into a relationship with someone else when all I wanted... was to be with you."

He brought his eyes back up to meet hers. "That was my fault," he said, shaking his head. "If I'd taken your hint and asked you out when I had the chance then we could've been together all this time."

This time, she shook her head. "Not really. House rules, remember?"

"Oh yeah. You don't really think about all that when you've left care"—he smiled somewhat tentatively—"but those rules aren't standing in between us anymore."

She blinked, her own smile wavering. As wonderful as it was to finally hear him voice his feelings and to voice hers in return, she still wasn't quite ready to change their relationship to the point of no return. She didn't know what she'd been thinking when she'd tried to get him to ask her out last year; if she wasn't ready now, she certainly hadn't been back then. In truth, it wasn't a relationship itself that she wasn't ready for but a relationship with him, specifically; she'd been fine being Brandon's girlfriend because she'd always known on a subconscious level that they were never going to last but if she was going to be with Tyler, she was going to be with him forever, and that required considerable thought. She was still only fifteen. Was she mature enough for forever just yet? She still had so much of her life to figure out: her career, what she wanted from life, e.t.c. She didn't want to rush into things and end up messing them up forever...

"You're right," she agreed softly. "The rules don't apply to us anymore, not outside of Ashdene Ridge, anyway, but I need more time. We already don't see much of each other and I know that that's kinda my fault but I'd hate only seeing you like once a week during a school lunch break. I  _already_  hate it. I think I'll be in a better place once we finish school. I mean, Luke only got into his first serious relationship in his last year of uni and even though I don't like his girlfriend, I think that's how it should be. I'm not saying we should wait  _that_  long; Luke only met Millie in uni but I've already got you—" She stopped, realising she'd been rambling. Tyler sure looked overwhelmed. She sighed. "Sorry. You get what I'm saying, don't you? Do you... agree?"

"I think I do," he replied, sitting down on the edge of her bed in front of her chair. "I don't have as much on my plate as you do now that I've decided what I want to do at college but I get where you're coming from and I can wait. It's not long now; school finishes in five months."

She laughed under her breath, feeling ridiculously giddy. "You know, the main reason I thought you'd gone off me and fallen for Piper was that I didn't say anything about this—us—when you left. Well, that and the fact that we never see each other outside of school anymore."

"We're here now, aren't we?" he asked, wagging his eyebrows. She bit back a grin. "Jodes, I'm your best mate. Just being your friend until we can properly be together is enough for me. I mean, yeah, I also hate that we can't hang out as much as we used to but it won't be like that forever."

The idea of waiting five months until they could spend more time together was emotionally draining but there was nothing to be done about it. There was simply no free time on her schedule, at least not until she made it into the team two months from now. Well, that was life. At least they both now knew where they stood.

"Wait," she began, recalling what had largely led to her misconception in the first place. "What was it that you wanted to tell me? You know, the reason you messaged me?"

"Oh, that," he said, waving his hand. "That's nothing. Nothing important, anyway. I can tell you later."

She raised an eyebrow, noticing that he seemed to have been caught off-guard by her question. "You sure? It sounded important in the text."

"One hundred per cent, as Dexter would say."

Was this the odd behaviour Sally had been referring to? Or was he merely shying away from the real topic of his mother thinking Jody was pregnant with his child?

"Alright," she acquiesced, deciding to leave that topic for another day; he clearly wasn't going to disclose whatever it was now. "Well, you said you've decided what you're going to do at college. Is it radio? Which one are you going to?"


	38. Chapter 38

_You know what day it is today. Do you want to meet up?_

Jody's reply was an instant one:  _No_.

Rubbing her eyes, she yawned and turned over in bed. Today was  _not_  a special day. She didn't know why Luke was making such a big deal of it; it was just another Sunday wherein she was going to eat breakfast, brush, shower, and then go to the gym to train with Amy.

_Are you sure? It'll just be me and you; Millie's going down to London._

She rolled her eyes. She couldn't care less where his bitch of a girlfriend was going to be, and it wasn't going to change her mind either way.

_So? I'm busy 2day._

A knock on the door drew her attention and she peered up from her cracked phone screen to see Charlie popping her round the door. Jody muttered a lethargic 'good morning' before yawning again.

"Morning!" Charlie replied. "Are you going to go down to the cemetery today? Do you need someone to go with you? I'm up for it."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Jody said dryly, sitting up on her elbows. "I've got no interest in going."

"Are you sure?"

She nearly growled. Yes, she was bloody well sure! Why did everyone keep asking her that? Charlie was the third to ask that morning alone, the first being Tyler who'd texted to make sure she was okay.

"Why wouldn't I be?" she questioned, swinging her legs over the edge of her bed and standing up. "Just because I forgave her, it doesn't mean that I have to like her. I  _don't_."

Charlie's eyes widened. "I know, but she was still your mum. You don't have to like her to go and lay flowers at her grave."

"Well why have you never laid any at your dad's grave then?" she snapped, shrugging her dressing gown on. "Since you suddenly think dead deadbeat parents deserve to be remembered now?

Charlie's face hardened. "I would if I knew where he was buried. My mum's never told me. But thanks for reminding me; I'll ask her the next time I visit her."

Jody suddenly felt horrible. "Charlie, I didn't mean to sound so—"

"It's okay," Charlie cut her off, forcing a fake smile onto her face. "Let's go and get breakfast."

Before Jody could even begin to formulate a reply, Charlie swiftly turned around and disappeared from view. Sighing inwardly, Jody shoved her hands into her fluffy pockets and followed the older girl out, intentionally leaving her phone behind on her bed. The way things were going, there was a good chance that  _Kingsley_  would somehow end up texting her about the 'great matter' everyone else just couldn't stop talking about.

The kitchen was quiet; most of the household members preferred to sleep in during the weekends, especially on Sundays. Unfortunately, Jody had been forced to give her Sunday lie-ins up in favour of bettering her boxing skills; the gym was quietest and therefore at its best in the mornings. She grabbed some cereal and sat down at the breakfast bar, shifting uncomfortably in her seat as Charlie and Alex discussed something in hushed whispers. Bringing Charlie's father up had been a low blow, she knew that, but she couldn't, for the life of her, figure out why she'd done it in the first place. What was wrong with her?

Breakfast continued to be a tense and silent affair until May-Li entered the kitchen with baby Henry Joseph in tow. While the others immediately started rising from their seats to fawn over the baby, Jody stayed rooted to hers, uninterested in seeing him. It wasn't that she didn't think he was cute—far from it, actually—but she found the prospect of being near him daunting. Suppose May-Li asked her to hold him for her while she ran some sort of errand? She'd just end up dropping him on his head. She knew she would.

"May-Li," Mike started, walking into the kitchen, "have you forgotten about the funding panel?" He stopped when he saw Henry, giving his colleague a pointed look.

"He'll be gone soon and so will I," May-Li assured, bouncing Henry on her hip. "I'm just waiting for the babysitter to get here."

"Babysitter?"

"Mhm. Childminder's ill. He's got the flu."

"May-Li?" Jody began, quickly getting up as Henry eyed her. "Could you drop me off to the gym on your way to the meeting?"

"I'm afraid I can't," May-Li answered with a frown. "The meeting's on the other side of town and if I drop you off, I'll be late. Sorry..."

Dunking her bowl into the sink, Jody humbly shook her head. "It's alright. I'll just walk."

By the time she got to drying her hands, the doorbell rang, but no one seemed to notice because they were all enthralled by Henry. Sifting through the baby bag with a determined expression on her face, May-Li asked for someone to 'please go and answer the door' for her.

"Don't ask me," Floss grumbled, crossing her arms. Apparently, she was the only person who'd heard the request. "The last time I answered the door, I got a nasty shock!"

Jody rolled her eyes; Floss was, of course, referring to the arrival of the new temporary resident who also happened to be her 'mortal enemy', Ross of Boland House. She threw the hand towel down on the counter. "I'll get it!"

As things turned out, Floss wasn't the only one surprised upon opening the door that morning: there, out on the doorstep, stood none other than Tyler Lewis.

"Hi," he greeted, a bashful grin on his face.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, unable to hide her surprise. "Don't you have to swing by your stepdad's street food outlets later?"

"Oh, you're here!" May-Li exclaimed from behind, before he could answer. Jody turned her head to see the care worker walking into the lobby with Henry in his pushchair. "I just need you to look after him for a few hours. Everything you need is in this"—she held up the bag she'd been rifling through earlier—"but if you're unsure about something, drop me a text. I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

"Hold on," Jody interrupting, looking between the pair before settling her gaze on Tyler. "You're babysitting?!"

.:. QK .:.

"What?" Tyler asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jody jumped, realising she'd been staring at him for the last few minutes as he'd fed baby Henry. "Nothing. I just didn't know you were a baby-whisperer."

He chuckled, gently placing little Henry in his pushchair. "I'm not."

"How do you know what to do, then? And why did you agree to babysit him in the first place?"

"Kamal's sister asks him to look after his nephew who's a little bit older than Henry sometimes and I've seen him do the basics enough times to know. As for the babysitting, I offered." The sofa sunk as he sat down next to her. "I, uhh, called May-Li about something in the morning but she told me she couldn't really talk because the childminder's ill and Alice is away. When I heard how stressed she was, I thought why not?"

She nodded. "So you're going to help Kamal later?"

"That's the plan," he answered before turning towards her, biting his lip somewhat hesitantly. She blinked, feeling awkward. Somehow, she knew what she going to ask, and sure enough, he did. "So, how are you holding up?"

"I'm fine," she replied shortly. "Today just feels like any other day, really. I'm going to go to the gym and get on with my life "

"So you're not upset or anything?"

A frustrated sigh escaped her lips. "No! You already asked me this, remember?!"

"Yep," he said, nodding slowly. "You said you were fine that time too but, honestly, I didn't believe you. I still don't."

Why the hell not?!

"Because you keep snapping."

Blood rushed to her cheeks; had she said that out loud? What else did he expect her to do, though? Everyone's concern was doing her head in. How was she supposed to get on with her life if everyone, including him, kept reminding her of today's so-called significance?

"Well, I  _am_  fine," she asserted, crossing her arms. "I'm just a little annoyed because everyone keeps asking about..." She trailed off, wrinkling her nose; if she acknowledged what day it was, he'd think she actually wanted to talk about it. "Anyway, I  _will_  be fine once I get to the gym. Amy's expecting me."

"Amy-might-be-your-sister-Amy?"

"That's the one."

"Why don't I walk you there?" he suggested, his eyes lighting up. "May-Li told me I should take Henry out for a walk, anyway, and I've never been to the gym before."

"That's not something you want to admit to people," she teased. "Especially girls."

"Haha," he said sarcastically, though a smile tugged at his lips. "You're the only girl I need."

Shocked, Jody peered into the lobby with wide eyes to see if anyone was loitering around before turning back to him and slapping him on the arm. "What if someone heard that?! You know what this lot are like!"

He laughed. "I think they all know what's going on, Jodes. Some of them knew before we did, remember?"

"Don't remind me."

All of a sudden, Tyler sniffed the air, a look of disgust appearing on his face, and then leant down to sniff Henry, which he seemed to regret; he immediately pulled back and let out a noise. He turned to her just as the foul smell reached her nostrils. She hadn't smelt anything that bad since she'd visited Sasha's house while her sister, Olivia, was being potty trained. "Before we leave, could you just watch him for a sec? I'm gonna need rubber gloves and a nose clip."

"Me?" she asked, gulping. Being around Olivia had been hard enough, and other people had actually been around then. Looking after a baby on her own, though? She couldn't handle it. "Why can't you just take him?"

"Because he stinks right now. If I take him to the kitchen, there's gonna be a riot." She thought about that for a second, concluding that he was probably right. "I won't take long. Just do it. It'll be fine. It'll be good practice for when you're a mum."

WHAT?! Her, a mum? What a joke! Unfortunately, by the time she found her voice, he'd already left the room. She released a shaky breath, looking at the smelly baby in the pushchair. Was that what Tyler wanted for them in the future? A baby? Or, more likely, a bunch of babies? If it was, he was going to be sorely disappointed; she couldn't be a mother. What did she know about babies? What did she know about burping, feeding, and all that? She shook her head. That stuff could probably be learnt; surely, no woman was born knowing how to raise a baby? No. The major problem was that she didn't know anything about providing a little human being with a good, happy childhood. To do that, she would've had to have had one of those herself. That woman lying beneath the cold hard ground, the woman she was expected to be mourning and remembering right now, had made sure she hadn't.

What was truly terrifying was that Tyler would never fully understand what that felt like. Sure, he had numerous horrible memories of his mother lying limp in bed, crippled with depression, but at least he had the good ones too, those of playing in the park together and having ice cream. What did she have? Kingsley's drunken rage? Denise's cruel reminders that she was nothing more than an accident? Gray's absence? She couldn't recall any happy memories, not even one.

.:. QK .:.

She was still agonising over it when Tyler called her name, gesturing towards the pelican crossing box. Snapping out of her thoughts, she pressed the crossing button and offered him a subdued smile.

"What's wrong?" he asked, seemingly unconvinced by her facade. "You look worried."

"I've been thinking about what you said," she replied as they crossed the road, "and I know we're still young but I don't think I want what you want. I mean, I don't want kids. That's gonna become a problem in the future, isn't it?"

"Why?"

"Because if we don't want the same things out of life, especially something as big as that, then how do we even work as a couple?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I mean why don't you want kids?"

His question made her straight up stop in the middle of the busy footpath. How could he even ask her that? Couldn't he see why? He knew what her family was like, what sort her mother had been. He  _knew_.

"I think you've forgotten who I am, Tyler," she stated as someone pushed past her. "I'm the girl who was raised by Denise Jackson. I might've cut her off, I might be a Gray again, but she's always going to be part of me. Half of me. The only half that I know."

"So, it's not actually that you don't want kids," he began, beckoning her to follow as he pushed Henry's pushchair out of the congestion, "but you think your being in care means you can't have a family? Because I get that. I really do."

"It's not just that," she said, joining him at the entrance to a side road. "It's my mum. I can't remember a single play date, bedtime story, trip to the park! I bet she never even took me out when I was his"—she nodded at Henry—"age. How can I raise a child when I've got nothing to base it on? Nothing good, I mean. There's plenty bad..."

"I could ask myself the same thing about being a dad because I've never met mine but that doesn't mean I'll be an awful one. Growing up, I knew what kind of dad I would've wanted and I can try to be that dad to my own kids."

She blinked. The four-year-old version of her had also dreamt up a dad but that was all it had ever been—a lonely child's sad dream. "That's great an' all, Tyler, but it's fantasy. My mum was a real person, and she thought that locking me up in my room was normal. You tell me how I can raise a happy child when that was my  _prime_  example of a mother."

"Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Your mum might not have gave you the best childhood but because of that, you know exactly how not to treat a child. You hated being locked up, how lonely and scared it made you feel, so you'd never do that to your own kid."

He was right; she would never treat any child like that, let alone her own. However, that alone wouldn't make her a good mother or even a decent one; her child wouldn't grow up abused and/or neglected but he or she wouldn't necessarily have a happy childhood either. Mundane was the first word that came to mind. Either that, or Tyler would be the fun dad and she would be the boring, emotionally distant mum, like her own.

"Look," Tyler spoke, drawing her attention, "like you said, we're still young. Maybe, when we get to that point in life, you'll feel differently about all this."

He said that like she was bound to change her mind, but what if she wasn't? What if this was one of those things they were never going to agree on? Could their relationship survive it? She feared the answer, but still asked anyway.

"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

She couldn't argue with that. After all, what was the point of disturbing the peace now over something that wouldn't affect them for years to come? They still had to finish their education, get jobs, get their own place...

Henry cooed just then, reminding her of his presence, and as she looked down at him, the corners of her lips automatically curved upwards. If there was one part of motherhood she was going to have no qualms with, it was the sight of a cute little face peering up at her.

.:. QK .:.

After a couple of hours of training, Jody had May-Li pick her up and listened in amusement as she was updated on the situation at home: May-Li had smashed her funding panel presentation but Mike had called the contest to determine who won the funds, in the form of a room refurb, off due to cheating, and Ross was moving back to Boland House within the hour, officially making him the Ashdene Ridge resident with the shortest tenure, which was ironic because Floss was set to become the one with the longest tenure by August 2020. More surprising still was the news that the two former mortal enemies had become fast friends.  _Fast_  indeed.

As May-Li pulled up into the drive to park her car next to Mike's, Jody glanced out of her window and spotted Tyler standing by the front door, holding Henry in his arms.

"Tyler's still here?" she asked, looking back to May-Li. "I thought he would've been with his stepdad by now."

"Ah, I asked him if he could look after Henry just a little bit longer so I could collect you from the gym," May-Li answered, her eyes trained on her reverse camera. "Anyway, he'll be free any second now. I finally got hold of one of Alice's mates who can take Henry home and keep an eye on him until I finish work."

Jody nodded, waiting for May-Li to turn the engine off before throwing the door open and climbing out of the car, lugging her gym bag along with her. Once she reached the front door, she set her bag on the ground and silently stood by as Tyler smoothly handed Henry to May-Li.

"Freedom," she teased, digging her hands into her pockets as they walked up the drive, away from the house.

"Work, more like," he said, blowing out his cheeks. "Kamal's gonna pick me up in a minute and then we're straight off to the outlets."

She raised an eyebrow, noting his reluctance. "Hey, if you don't like it, why don't you just say? I know you had a deal with your mum, but you don't have to work there if you really don't want to."

"Nah, I don't mind it; it gives me something to do on Sundays when I'm not studying. It's just now that I'm here with you, I don't exactly feel like leaving."

His feelings were only natural; prior to this morning, she hadn't seen him since Wednesday lunchtime, and despite agreeing to bear the distance until her trials were over and done with, she couldn't help but feel that their meetings were too few and far between. She sighed. "I know exactly what you mean."

"But I've got to keep my word; I told Mum and Kamal that I'll help, so I'll help," he said, kicking a stone on the gravel. "You know, it sounds silly but I don't think I realised how important family is until today. I mean, when we're here, all we think about is getting our forever families but we don't really realise why until we're actually living it."

Sidestepping as a black car came up the drive, she nodded as if she understood what Tyler was saying but, in all honesty, she had no clue. Didn't care kids understand the need for family better than anyone? After all, all any of them ever wanted was to go back home or find a new family. So, how could Tyler claim to understand that feeling even better as a former care kid? Today, no less? What'd happened today, besides her mother's death anniversary?

"Oh, thank God you're here!" May-Li exclaimed from behind, and Jody turned to see her care worker rushing to greet the owner of the black car with Henry's pushchair in tow. Somehow, the sight reminded her of a comment Tyler had made earlier regarding a phone call to said care worker. "By the way, why did you call May-Li in the morning? Is something wrong?"

He looked like a deer caught in headlights. "Err, why would something be wrong?"

" _Err,_  because as much as you like May-Li, you wouldn't call her at seven in the morning just for a chat. None of us would."

"Sure I would," he said, flashing her a grin. "I'm a friendly guy!" She crossed her arms, giving him a pointed look. It didn't even take five seconds for him to drop what his teachers called his 'fool act'. "Alright... I did want to talk to her about something but it's all done now; I had a chat with Mike instead. It's all good."

"What's all good, though?"

A car horn interrupted them; Jody looked up to see an all too familiar silver sports car stopping in front of the driveway.

"Aaaaand that's my ride!" Tyler exclaimed, seemingly all too happy to escape her.

"I'll get you for this, Tyler," she warned, glaring at him as he gave her a little wave before scurrying towards Kamal's car.

 _Odd_. At first, he hadn't wanted to leave her but now he was literally running away. What on Earth was going on? She shook her head, shooting him a salty smirk as he looked at her through the window before heading inside.

 _Family is important._ What had he meant by it, exactly, and why had he told her, of all people, when all she had left was Luke, and possibly Amy? Despite everything, however, his words gave her pause; if family was indeed as important as he said it was, and surely it had to be, even to someone in her situation, then why had she turned Luke down yet again? She was a damned fool. When else would she get an opportunity to go to his place without Millie lurking around in the back? As she hopped up the stairs, she checked the time on her phone. 10:31. There was still time to go and see him before lunch or maybe even stay for lunch, and they didn't even have to talk about Denise, not if she didn't want to.

What was she waiting for?


	39. Chapter 39

"So, are you doing anything special today?" Candi-Rose asked over breakfast, a knowing grin on her face.

Jody cast a brief glance around the dining table, resisting the urge to roll her eyes when she spotted a few smirks, before turning her gaze back on Candi-Rose. "Why would I? I didn't do it last year. Or the year before that. Or ever _._ "

"But you didn't have a boyfriend back then."

"I still don't. I broke up with Brandon two  _whole_  months ago."

Candi-Rose raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't talking about Brandon and you know it."

"I don't," Jody insisted, shrugging her shoulders. In all honesty, she didn't understand why Candi-Rose was playing this game; the girl already knew that she and Tyler weren't official and that they were waiting until they were a little older to begin a proper relationship. After all, there was no need to tell anyone anything until there was something to actually tell.

Luckily for her, before Candi-Rose could continue her line of questioning, May-Li breezed into the kitchen, announcing that Charlie and Jody had both received mail. Charlie immediately rose from her seat and snapped her square-shaped envelope up just as May-Li placed it on the breakfast bar, but Jody hung back, continuing to eat breakfast. Kingsley had already written this month and she hadn't been told to expect mail by anyone else so whatever it was couldn't be important and could therefore wait. Besides, it wasn't as if she was going to receive a Valentine anytime soon.

"Oooh, is it from someone special?" Candi-Rose teased, nudging Charlie who just smiled, giving nothing away. Looking up from her bowl, Jody couldn't help but notice that Alex was conveniently sitting at the breakfast bar, facing away from her and everyone else. He didn't strike her as the romantic type but then again, Ryan had never struck her as someone with a nice side.

As if on cue, Ryan pointed out that Charlie hadn't even opened the envelope yet, regarding Candi-Rose as if she was stupid. Candi-Rose glared at him in return, telling him to stay out of it. Of course, Ryan's nice side had vanished as quickly as it'd appeared; he'd reverted to his usual self a mere couple of hours after helping Floss out with her noisy hobby, and that had been _weeks_  ago. Bizarrely, instead of ignoring Candi-Rose as if she was an inconvenient a piece of gum under his shoe like he usually did, Ryan actually responded to her scathing retort, and their slight exchange over Charlie's mail speedily devolved into a full-blown quarrel. Stranger still, some of the others sitting at the table began to join in and take sides. Charlie herself didn't stick around for long, shooting Jody a bewildered look before leaving the kitchen with Alex.

"Guys!" Chloe exclaimed, trying and failing to get the others' attention. "Stop!"

"What's wrong with them?" Sid asked, clutching his creepy puppet doll thing. "I'm a bit scared."

Jody momentarily stared at the seven squabbling idiots in disbelief before shaking her head. "Let's just get out of here," she said, picking her bowl up and rising to her feet in an instant. Chloe and Sid nodded fervently.

On her way out of the kitchen, she swiftly grabbed her mail from the counter. Noting its rectangular shape, she was relieved; Candi-Rose's interrogation had her a little worried that Tyler would expect them to celebrate Valentine's Day, even though they were still just friends. Romantic friends, maybe, but still friends. She tore the top of the envelope, about to pull the letter out when Mike emerged from the office with a frenzied look in his eyes, harrying her, Sid and Chloe to go and get ready for school. Realising she was, in fact, running a little late, she closed the envelope, resolving to put it in her school bag and check it out at break time.

.:. QK .:.

"Thought I'd find you here."

Jody peered up from her maths textbook in surprise to see Tyler grinning back at her and panicked. Had she got her dates mixed up? They'd hung out together during the lunch break on Tuesday and she'd been so sure that they'd agreed the next time was going to be sometime next week. It wasn't that she didn't want to spend time with him but if she didn't study now, she'd fall behind and end up having to cut her training time at the gym.

"Don't worry; I'm not staying," he assured, leaning on the back of the chair next to her. "The guys are waiting for me."

She inwardly sighed in relief. "So?"

He pursed his lips, scratching the back of his neck. "Well, I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me today... for dinner?"

It took a while for the words to sink in, especially 'dinner'. The last time she'd gone out for dinner was for her third date with Brandon, the one where he'd asked her to be his girlfriend. She cringed at how stupid she'd been at the time; she would've saved herself and Brandon a whole lot of trouble if she'd just said no then and there.

"Actually, forget I said anything," Tyler said quickly, pushing himself off the chair. "I have to—"

"Wait!" she exclaimed, holding her arm out. Noticing she'd drawn attention from some of her neighbours in the library, she dropped her voice by a few notches. "I didn't say no."

He stopped in his tracks, whirling around to face her once more. "Oh, you made a bit of a funny face just then so I thought...?"

Recalling what she'd just been thinking about, she laughed nervously under her breath. Was this a date too? Their first of many? If it was, where would that leave their relationship by the end of the day? Still romantic friends? Or something more, something she still wasn't  _quite_  sure she was ready for? "Nah, you're alright. I just remembered something... weird, that's all. Anyway, where exactly do you want to go?"

"There's this place near town, next to the bus bays. It's not too swanky or anything, and it's pretty affordable. We're going to have to beat the rush hour if we want seats, though; they'll be really busy what with it being Valentine's Day an' all."

So he  _did_  know it was Valentine's Day... The corners of her lips twitched. Maybe this was a date after all. She certainly had no qualms with the spending the evening with him; Bernadette always closed the gym during the evenings on Valentine's Day. "Do they take reservations?"

"They do but I'm pretty sure they're all taken by now."

"It wouldn't hurt to call. See if they've got a cancellation or something."

"I'll do that," he said with a nod. "I'll see you later, then; I better get back to the guys."

"Sure," she replied, turning her attention back to her work.

As she heard him walk away, she allowed her lips to fully stretch into a wide smile. She couldn't help it. Two whole years after realising she had feelings for him, they were  _finally_  going on a date. Back when they'd met in 2012, who'd have thought that they'd end up dating seven years later? Gina? Mike? Tracy? Heck, even their fellow residents? Speaking of fellow residents, Candi-Rose was not going to let her live this one down; she was in for hours of merciless teasing at the girl's hands. Upon hearing the scraping of a chair, she suddenly remembered where she was and shook her head, banishing thoughts of Tyler from her mind. She was supposed to be working, not daydreaming like a girly girl—she did enough of that in class, enough for it to be reflected in her most recent school report, something Mike hadn't been too happy about.

The bell rang ten minutes later, signalling the end of the break. There would be another bell three minutes later to signal the beginning of the next period. Since her next class was on the other side of the school, she hastily swept her books up, shoving them into her bag but as she opened it wider to put her pencil case in, the letter she'd received in the morning fell out. She blinked, realising she'd forgotten all about her plan to read it during the break. After stealing a brief glance at the library clock, she pulled the letter out of the torn envelope, opened it, and quickly scanned its contents.

Feeling the blood drain from her face, she closed the letter and shoved it back into her bag with its envelope. She couldn't believe it.  _Brought forward. 20th February._  What was she meant to do now, especially with the gym closed tonight? How was she supposed to fit a fortnight's training into five days?

.:. QK .:.

Throughout the day, Jody's concerns continued to weigh heavily on her mind, so much so that she was still trying to mentally accommodate the date change into her training schedule while she was getting ready to order dinner. She'd chatted with Tyler well enough when they'd met outside the restaurant through to when they'd been shown to their table but as soon as the menus had arrived, she'd allowed her mind to drift back into troubling waters.

"Ma'am?" a waiter said, standing dutifully by their table. "Are you ready to order?"

Collecting her thoughts, she forced herself to smile up at him. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I am. Just give me a sec."

After surveying the menu properly for a moment or two, she was about to order a dish she reckoned would taste phenomenal but stopped short when she remembered her newly formulated regime of less food and more exercise. As much as it pained her, she instead picked the safe vegetarian options for both her starters and main, ignoring the comical look Tyler was giving her, and hoped for the best. She would, of course, not enjoy the meal as much as she would have a higher calorie one but would surely thank herself later when she saw her name up on the list of girls who'd made it into the junior regional boxing team. As they said: no pain, no gain.

"Jodes, are you okay?" Tyler asked as soon as the waiter began to walk away after taking his order. "You've been a little quiet."

"Yeah," she replied in an instant, waving her hand dismissively. She'd already told him about the trials being brought forward but had downplayed the aftermath; this was a date, not an opportunity for her to burden him with her problems. "I'm all good."

He didn't seem to buy it but nodded nonetheless. "You know, I wish I'd took a bus here like you did."

She raised an eyebrow; he hated taking the bus, avoiding it whenever possible. "Why?"

"Kamal wouldn't stop taking the piss," he answered, a bashful smile appearing on his face. "He kept going on and on about me and my 'Sudoku Girl'."

Sudoku Girl wasn't a name she particularly liked but she giggled despite herself; the thought of being Tyler's 'girl' in any context (except as his daughter, of course) was heartwarming. In a way, being called as such made her feel like she belonged to him in a manner that she hadn't to the Jacksons and/or the Grays.

"Well, taking the bus did nothing for me; Candi  _still_  took the piss. She even got me into a skirt for you. Again."

"I'll have to thank her. Again."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What did your mum say, anyway? I bet she made fun of you an' all. Her little boy all grown up..."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "Nah. She kinda thinks we were a thing well before tonight; she would've been more surprised if I  _didn't_  take you out." She had no difficulty believing that; Sally had always looked at her and Tyler a little funny. Speaking of Tyler, she noticed him suddenly bite his lip and look down at his hands. "Actually, she asked me these really awkward questions a few weeks ago..."

Blood immediately rushed to Jody's cheeks and she closed her eyes, groaning in embarrassment. Sasha had been right after all. She sighed, forcing her eyes open to see that Tyler appeared to be just as red as she felt, and willed herself to calm down. She didn't know why she felt so mortified; she'd been through this before when Ryan had labelled her indigestion as morning sickness but the embarrassment she'd experienced back then didn't hold a candle to what she felt now. Maybe it was because as each day passed, the prospect of her actually conceiving a child, with Tyler, grew ever stronger.

"Say no more!" she pleaded, clasping her hands together in mock desperation. "I know exactly what you're talking about! I just hope you told her what was what."

"Actually, I didn't."

"Tyler!"

"She didn't actually ask me outright!" he defended, holding his hands up in surrender. "She just asked me if there was something I wanted to tell her, maybe about some mistake I'd made that was going to affect my life. I said no but I had no idea what she was on about at the time until I overheard her telling Kamal what she really thought was going on."

Shifting uncomfortably, she couldn't help but ask, "So she still thinks...?"

He winced. "Yes...?"

"Well," she began with a sigh, "she'll realise she's wrong in a few months. Not everyone goes into the Pharmacy for... well,  _that_."

"Why were you there, then?" he asked, and she could tell from the glint of mischief in his eyes that he already had a pretty good idea of the answer.

"Err, none of your business!"

They both laughed, or rather giggled, together, and over the next hour, the pair of them ate their food and talked about anything and everything, including school gossip; apparently, Bill had been dumped yet again, on Valentine's Day no less, but younger sister Hannah was still going strong with the boy she'd started dating after finishing with Tyler. As the evening wore on, she even found herself telling him about Charlie's mystery Valentine's card and her suspicions that Alex was the one who'd sent it.

"I don't know," Tyler said, a speculative expression on his face. "Would they risk it? When they live in the same care home? I mean, I know that he doesn't care about the rules, but her?"

"She's a stickler for them," Jody agreed, wrinkling her nose. "But maybe that's why  _she_  didn't send  _him_  one."

"Maybe." He frowned. "Seems a little peak, though."

"I know but imagine what would happen if Mike or May-Li found out."

Just then, he smiled, leaning in just a little. "Speaking of those two, how did they react when you told them you were going out with me? What did they say?"

"Nothing... Well, they did give me those sly little looks—you know which ones—"

"Oh,  _yeah_ , I know."

"—when Candi fussed after me in the lobby but, really, they weren't too bothered about what I was getting up to because they were too busy dealing with the others. You know, because of the fight. They're  _all_  grounded until Monday."

Tyler's eyes widened. "Harsh."

Having finished eating, she placed her fork and knife in the middle of her empty plate and sat back, nodding in agreement with his statement. She was only glad that she'd had the sense to leave the kitchen before she ended up under fire just for being present during the fight; Mike had a rather strict and totally unfair 'if you're there, you're involved' kind of attitude. Still, considering what'd happened the last time the constant fighting had got on his nerves, it could've been worse.

Tyler finished eating soon after her, and after paying for their meals, he offered to walk Jody down to the bus stop and stay with her until either her bus or his ride arrived. He confessed that he didn't know how long Kamal was going to be; while they'd enjoyed their dinner date, Kamal and Sally had been out spending a romantic evening of their own.

"I wish you would've let me pay for half," she said as they left the restaurant. Brandon hadn't allowed her to pay for her meal on their dinner date either, even though she could've afforded to, which had made her feel dependent and useless, a state of being she hated more than any other.

"I will next time," he conceded, casually grabbing her hand and slipping it into his. She tried not to react, clamping down on the instantaneous urge to squeal as she felt herself become hot under the collar. They'd grabbed each other's hands multiple times before when it'd come to stopping the other from doing something stupid but had never done so for the purpose of holding hands. "But if it means that much to you, you can pay me back."

"I think I will," she let out, squeezing his hand without even meaning to. She didn't dare look up at him for his reaction.


	40. Chapter 40

Saturday morning, two days after Valentine's Day, Jody rushed through her homework like there was no tomorrow, determined to get it out of the way so she could attend to more pressing matters. Sure enough, she managed to finish it all within a couple of hours by writing the bare minimum, giving one-word answers where possible, and was searching the house for someone to help her with her beep test by ten-thirty.

She didn't bother asking May-Li; the grounded lot were swarming around her like flies, complaining about how bored they were, and only God knew when she would be free to breathe again let alone spare a moment for Jody. Alex and Charlie were out mowing lawns again, though Jody believed that excuse less and less with each passing week, Ryan was in a sour mood because of something or the other, and Sid was off being a weirdo, leaving her with Chloe, who seemed to be doing nothing of consequence in the lounge, all by her lonesome.

"All you have to do is hold it and tell me what level I reach," she said, showing Chloe the app on her phone. "Oh, and start it again if I need you to."

"What's in it for me?" Chloe asked, crossing her arms.

Jody blinked in surprise at the girl's sudden self-interest. "The satisfaction of helping a mate out." That'd always been enough for Chloe in the past. What had changed now? She almost felt as if she were speaking to the wrong Reeves.

Chloe let out an exaggerated sigh, studying her unpainted nails in apparent boredom. "I don't know... I've been there, done that already. Tonnes. It never gets  _me_  anywhere."

This conversation was a colossal waste of time. The trial was in four days. Four. Ninety-six hours, to be exact, which sounded like a lot of time, but really wasn't when sleep and mealtimes were taken into account. The other girls at the gym had been training since last year for this so their trials being brought forward wasn't a big deal but Jody, having only decided to try out last month, was nowhere near ready. Fitting two weeks of training into four days was already an impossible feat without her having to put a pause on things to negotiate with Chloe. Still, going off to look for someone else would lead to more loss of valuable time.

"Alright," she conceded, putting her hands on her hips. "What do you want? I've got a stash of sweets and biscuits I can't eat anymore."

Chloe laughed, shaking her head. "I'm not a kid, Jody. I want something better than that."

Oh no. She couldn't ask for money; Jody had to save two to three weeks' worth pocket money to pay Tyler back for the Valentine's meal. "Like what?"

"What do you think of Candi-Rose? She can be a little annoying, can't she?"

Of all the things she'd been expecting Chloe to ask, this was not one of them. She squirmed, checking the time on her watch; she didn't feel comfortable talking about a friend behind her back, but she was running out of time. "Err—"

"Oh c'mon, spill. I know you two aren't as tight as you used to be. I mean, she's always hanging out with Floss, Taz and  _especially_  Bird nowadays..."

She hadn't noticed; she was far too busy to observe her friends' evolving social circles. "I guess." She glanced at her watch again. "Look, can we—"

"And then there are the comments," Chloe continued, as if Jody hadn't spoken, "about you and Tyler. She can't believe he's still interested in you, what with the way you dress and the junk you eat." She put her arms up in surrender. "Her words, not mine."

Jody stared back at Chloe in shock, as if she'd been slapped, before hastily looking down at herself. She couldn't care less about what she wore but bodily imperfections were not to be tolerated; not because of Tyler but because of the upcoming trials. Was she fat? She knew she had a little bit of a belly from years of biscuit and sweet binging—the evidence stared her in the face whenever she showered or bathed—but she hadn't realised it was that bad. However, if an idiot like Candi-Rose could see it, then surely it was bad, more than bad, in fact?

"Just start the test," she said, going to stand at one end of the 20m course she'd marked out earlier. She had to work this fat off.

Luckily, Chloe complied, perhaps having got what she wanted. Around ten minutes later, Jody failed to reach point A before the beep.

"What is it?" she asked, hoping she'd reached level 11 at least.

Squinting at the screen for a second or two, Chloe answered, "Level 10."

There was nothing worse than getting the level just below the one she wanted. It always happened at school, with grades. It couldn't be allowed to happen here as well. She nodded at Chloe. "Start it again."

She heard the beep and as she ran to point B, Ryan entered the scene and brushed past her, tripping her up in the process. She let out a soft grunt as she fell to the ground, but quickly stood up to face him as he mocked her for her 'nice reaction'.

"Err, Ryan?" Chloe butted in, her tone indignant.

Ryan ignored her, keeping his eyes on Jody. "Don't know why you're even bothering. You can train all you like; you'll never be nothing special. Just Jody."

But she wasn't 'just Jody', was she? She was Jody Gray. She opened her mouth to tell him that but no words came out and he turned away anyway. Instead, she pathetically watched on as he was berated by his sister. It seemed to be futile, though, because he walked away without saying another word.

"You know what he's like," Chloe said, turning to her with a frown. "Don't listen to him."

"Why shouldn't I?" Jody asked, thinking back to Candi's comment. "Candi's my friend and she thinks the same thing, doesn't she?" Chloe only bit her lip, her features morphing into those of guilt. Jody shook her head. "I'm going to the gym."

May-Li walked into the garden just then, carrying a pair of fold-up garden chairs. "I thought you went yesterday?"

Jody didn't answer, heading straight for the garden exit.

.:. QK .:.

Upon arriving at the gym, Jody was rattled to see many of her rivals for the regional team already hard at work, including the girl who was always hanging off her boyfriend's arm. She put her bag down at the side, her eyes never leaving the girl as she sparred with one of the gym trainers in the ring. Considering her fast legwork and reaction speed, she wasn't half bad. Clearly, Amy had misjudged her. Speaking of Amy, she was nowhere to be seen, which was odd in itself, but also unnerving because it meant that Jody was the only one left without a sparring partner. She felt so unbelievably useless standing at the side willy-nilly as she watched everyone else train around her. Deciding that the punching bags were better than nothing, she reached into her bag for her boxing gloves. If not anything else, Ryan and Candi were at least useful for riling her up before training and thus providing her with the motivation to punch.

After an hour of using a punching bag on and off, Jody noticed that two sparring partners had broken away from each other and were now going for individual exercises. She gritted her teeth together; these two girls were already moving on to their second part of training but she was going to be stuck on one exercise forever because of Amy. Where the fuck was she, anyway?! Had she just lied about training on Saturdays to act superior around her? Or was she staying away on purpose to ensure that Jody would fail, thereby eliminating some competition right off the bat? No... that would be stupid, even for her; the lack of training together would be to her detriment as well. Whatever her reasons, it still didn't change a thing; Jody still had no-one to spar with and likely wouldn't until Amy either showed up or she came back the next day.

Her eyes drifted back to one of the girls using the punching bags. She wasn't sure of the girl's age or even her name but she'd seen her sparring before and thought she was quite good. She wondered if the girl would consider sparring with her, if even for a bit. Well, there was only one way to find out.

"Uhh, hi," she began, carefully approaching the girl. She still remembered Brandon approaching her from the wrong side and ending up on the ground with a bloody nose. Well, at least she could always say that she and her first boyfriend had had one hell of a first meeting.

The girl momentarily glanced towards Jody, continuing to spar. "Yeah?"

Jody wasn't exactly encouraged by the girl's acerbic tone but decided to push on. "My sparring partner's not in today. I was wondering if you'd spar with me. Just for a bit? Like, fifteen minutes?"

The girl suddenly laughed before delivering a hard punch to her punching bag, and Jody stared back in confusion, feeling awkward as the girl took her boxing gloves off. " _Can't._  I'm going on a break right now." She turned to her sparring partner. "What'd ya say, babes?"

'Babes' smiled. "I'll be a minute, Jess."

"Err, okay," Jody said, trying not to let her humiliation show. There were nicer ways to just say no. Honestly, whoever said that boxing girls were all tomboys was wrong. They were all just as catty as the girly-girls. "Sorry to bother you,  _Jess_."

Jess apparently didn't like that response. She looked back to Jody, turning her nose up at her. "What makes you think I would wanna spar one minute with you, let alone fifteen?"

"Excuse me?" Jody responded, taken aback by Jess' hostility.

"I  _said_ ," Jess started, speaking louder than necessary, "what makes you think I would want to spar with  _you_?"

"What's wrong with me?" Jody asked, feeling her temper rise. What  _was_  wrong with her? Did this Jess bitch think she was fat too? Too fat to spar with her?

"Your little friend or sister, whatever she is, calls my girl over there"—Jess gestured towards the girl in the ring—"and her boyfriend out all the time. And not just her. Me and Emily, the other girls and their boyfriends... Have you seriously not noticed? She's legit messed up in the head, so jealous of everyone else because no guy or girl would ever look twice at her. Anyway, I don't want anything to do with anyone who talks to her."

Jody didn't even bother defending herself. If Jess was the type who judged people based on who they hung out with, then she didn't want anything to do with her either. She crossed her arms, putting on a smug smile. "That's fine by me."

As soon as Jess spun on her heel, Jody dropped her smile, returning to her punching bag. Thanks to Amy, she was stuck by herself for the entire day, and would just have to make herself content with solo training.

.:. QK .:.

It'd all just happened so quickly. One second, she'd been letting loose on the punching bags, imagining Ryan, Candi and even Amy, and then the next, everything had become blurry and she'd ended up falling into May-Li's waiting arms. She couldn't recall much else but could still feel the palpable shame that'd rolled off her as the other members' and gym trainers' eyes had burnt into her. She didn't think she'd ever be able to forgive herself for falling into such a state in front of the likes of Jess and Emily.

Sighing, she picked at the food May-Li had brought up for her after she'd bathed and changed into her nightwear. She didn't have much of an appetite but after the lecture May-Li had given her on listening to her body and knowing her own limits, she knew she was expected to finish the plate. Hence, she ate her meal bit by bit, drowning out the corridor noise by wallowing in self-pity. She had no chance of making the team now.

She heard the wheels before she saw them and sure enough, Chloe appeared around the corner a few seconds later and knocked rather unnecessarily. Jody played along, telling her to come in.

"How did you get up here?" she asked.

"Mike and May-Li helped me," Chloe answered, a humbling expression overcoming her features. "I'm so sorry, Jody. I didn't mean for this to happen when I told you what Candi-Rose said."

Jody scoffed. "Then why did you say it?"

Chloe looked down at her hands with a sigh. "I was hoping you'd confront her about it, maybe even fall out with her. I used the same tactic on her to make her fight with Floss and Taz. It was supposed to be a sort of revenge."

"Because of the trip?" Chloe looked up in surprise. "Floss told me when I got home. Why did you do it, though? This isn't like you. Like Ryan, yeah, but not you."

"No, it isn't. I was being stupid. I know that now."

Jody nodded, but frowned. Something didn't quite add up. Chloe's heel turn was out of character, yes, but it didn't make sense to lash out over a mere theatre trip. "What really happened? You couldn't have done all that just for a ticket."

"You're right," Chloe admitted quietly. "It wasn't all about the musical. I guess I was jealous."

"Jealous?"

"Yeah," she said, biting her lip. "I mean, it was mostly because I do all these nice things for all of them and when it was their turn to give something back, not even one of them would give a seat at the Greatest Snowman up for me but I've been thinking about it lately, really thinking about it, and I've realised that I was harsher on Bird than I was everyone else. I only made the others upset or fight but I nearly got him kicked out!"

"Yeah, I heard," Jody replied, remembering how shocked she'd been to hear it. She'd thought Floss had been exaggerating. "But what were you jealous of, exactly?"

"Him and her—Candi-Rose. The two of them."

Jody couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. Was Chloe saying what she thought she was saying?

"No, not like that!" Chloe protested as if she'd read Jody's mind. "But I feel like he's her best friend now, not me. She totally forgot about me when she signed up for the trip with him. She didn't even care that I didn't get to sign up; she even rubbed it in my face. And then when Mike had me pick our names out of a hat to see who's going, she was so glad that the last name to be picked was his, not mine. It got to me. She doesn't even call me her best friend anymore. She's still mine but I'm only her fate mate, like I was at the beginning. It's like we've gone backwards."

"Well..." Jody trailed off, not quite knowing what to say.

Whenever things like that had happened while Tyler was still a resident, he'd always wanted her to get a ticket too, like that time Mike and May-Li had hidden tickets for a launch around the house. It hadn't mattered that they weren't on the best of terms then because of Brandon or that the launch had turned out to be crap; she'd remembered feeling valued when he'd cheered for her to find a ticket and join him. To be honest, she would've been pissed as well if he'd got happy at someone else getting the (last) ticket instead of her.

"See? This isn't even the only time. She told  _him_  about Lauren first, and when I asked her why she didn't tell me, she said because I'd tell on her and that I wouldn't understand what she's going through since I live with my brother. But that doesn't make sense, because Bird's brother lives here too! I'm sure the real reason is that she spends more time with him; she probably didn't have any time to tell me."

"Have you tried talking to her?" Jody tried, for lack of anything else to say. She hadn't realised the situation between Chloe and Candi was quite this bad. "Maybe she's got another reason for wanting to spend more time with him rather than you. Maybe she, uhh, fancies him or something."

Chloe gave her an incredulous look. "He's not her type at all."

"You never know. I mean, I thought she was going out with Ryan at one point, back when I was with Brandon." Jody faltered; she'd meant it as a joke but could instantly tell from the look on Chloe's face that she'd said the wrong thing. "Wait... She wasn't, was she?"

"No, of course not," Chloe answered quickly. "That would've been a disaster. I love them both, but not together."

Jody cracked a smile. "I get what you mean." She did. The equivalent for her would be Sasha and Luke getting together five years down the line. An improvement on Luke and Millie, perhaps, but still not something she wanted to see. "So that wasn't a lovers' spat on Thursday morning?"

Chloe laughed. "No! They just get on each other's nerves really easily. I've still got no clue why the rest of them got involved, though."

"Me neither."

"By the way, Candi didn't actually say those things about you. Not like that. She said something more like it wouldn't hurt for you to dress more like us, and that you could do with cutting down on the junk food because it tends to make you break out. She meant well. I'm sorry for making it sound like something it wasn't."

"It's alright," Jody said with a small nod. "I guess I should tell you that what you said wasn't the only reason I overdid it. It wasn't even all Ryan. I mean, yeah, I didn't want to be 'just Jody' but I was more scared that I wouldn't catch up to the other girls." Now she never would.

"I bet they're not even that far ahead of you," Chloe assured. "Jay says you're great, he's learnt a lot from you, and Tyler always thought you were the best. I'm sure he still does."

Jody blushed, resisting the urge to grin like a madwoman. "Did he tell you that?"

"He didn't have to."

Somehow, she knew that Chloe was right. She and Tyler had something that transcended words, something that didn't always have to be voiced to be acknowledged. It was the reason she'd known he had feelings for her way before he'd told her, and why it'd taken them so long to say anything at all.

"Speaking of Tyler," Chloe began, her lips stretching into a devious smile, "is it true that you two are finally a couple?"

That was Candi more than Chloe talking, and both of them knew it. "I think I need some rest now," Jody said pointedly.

Chloe pouted but acquiesced, wishing her good luck with the trial before wheeling out of the room. Jody called out a thanks after her, pushing her tray to the side and lying on her back. She was going to go that trial, after all. How couldn't she, when she still had people who believed in her?

.:. QK .:.

The day of the trial rolled around as quickly as expected, if not quicker, but Jody found herself powering through the exercises the examiners had set for her with surprising ease. No, not ease, per se, because the trial was anything but easy, but a certain sense of carefree. Now that she was more focused on just doing her best rather than definitively getting into the team, she didn't feel bogged down by the insatiable need to be better than everyone else, the very need that drove Amy, who she hadn't seen since before the day of her collapse; she'd sworn off the gym since, deciding to return only after the trials were over and done with.

During her time away from the gym, Jody had taken a step back from life's pressures and focussed on the good things instead, namely going over to Tyler's a couple of times and giving Luke a call. She still had a few things to figure out like not skipping meals for the sake of staying slim and finally getting around to telling Luke about Gray but she was going to take things one at a time. Slowly.

As soon as Jody made her way out of the room where the trials were being held, a small private one usually reserved for VIP members, she breathed easy, and her lips naturally curved up into a smile. For the first time in a long time, being at the gym simply felt good and liberating again. Yearning for a drink, she walked towards the water cooler for a refill, only to see a certain someone standing on the other side of it.

"Tyler!" she exclaimed, leaping towards him and throwing her arms around him. He chuckled, hugging her back with one arm. A few weeks ago, maybe even the days leading up to her collapse, she wouldn't have been caught dead hugging anyone, let alone a guy, in the gym, but here she was. Here he was, too. She reluctantly pulled away, though he kept his one arm around her, and looked up at him, spying one of Jess' friends giving her a dirty look out of the corner of her eye. She didn't care, though. "What are you doing here? Haven't you got that huge essay due when school starts again?"

"I'm here to give you this," he replied, waving the DG biscuit tin around with his free hand. "And, yeah, I still have to do the essay, which is why I won't be sticking around for long."

She touched the cool lid of the tin with one finger, shooting him an amused look. "Did you break in and nick this? Gina sure would be proud."

"Yes and no," he answered. "Chloe let me in and let me  _borrow_  it. Anyway, you can't say no to a biscuit now that you've put the trials behind you, can you?"

"No, I can't," she admitted, sharing a conspiratory smile with him before lifting the lid. "Just one, though."

"Yeah, me too."


	41. Chapter 41

Sauntering into one of the many open classrooms, Jody carefully studied the posters strewn around the tables and pinned up on the walls and boards. Art. Music. Drama. Dance. Upon the first one, she thought of Tee who was studying Fine Art at university and, upon the third, Carmen who frequently went off to Europe to participate in university plays and the like. She was glad they'd made something of their lives. Now, if only she and Sasha could do the same. Unfortunately, Sasha wasn't of the same mind as her; instead of joining Jody in looking at potential colleges, she was off flirting with her one-time autumn fling, Josh, who for some reason, was also attending the college fair. Jody couldn't think why; he was already in his second year of uni, if memory served correctly. Still, she knew Sasha would later regret not taking a proper look around, so she grabbed leaflets from every art college and shoved them in her bag.

Walking back into the hall, she scoffed when she saw Sasha and Josh still standing exactly where they had been when she'd left, only now Josh had his arm slung around a blonde. As she got closer, she recognised the blonde as the one who'd nearly knocked Sasha over earlier in the day while on a phone call. Remembering that she'd had the decency to apologise, Jody smiled politely at the girl as Sasha introduced her as Josh's girlfriend, Molly. Molly seemed nice enough but as she suggested that they all grab coffee together from the vendor behind the school, Jody noticed Sasha giving the girl a nasty look and couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding; once Sasha made up her mind to dislike someone, she never let them forget it.

As expected, the trouble began as soon as the quartet sat down together on one of the picnic benches behind the school; Sasha began flirting with Josh in front of Molly like there was no tomorrow and started pointing out all the things Josh had done for her, asking Molly if he'd paid her the same courtesy. The expressions on both Molly's and Josh's faces seemed to say no, so the latter suggested getting another round of drinks; Jody politely declined but Sasha suspiciously opted for a coffee. Molly followed after her boyfriend, leaving Sasha and Jody alone.

"Sasha, just stop it," Jody warned sternly. "You can't flirt with someone else's boyfriend. It's just wrong."

"I'm not flirting!" Sasha protested, her eyes wide in outrage. "Me and Josh have always talked like that."

"Back when you were both single, yeah, but you can't anymore!" Okay, so Tyler had flirted with Jody a little back when she was with Brandon, but that was different. It'd never happened in front of Brandon, and she and Tyler had both known it wasn't going to go anywhere, at least not while she was still with Brandon. "Didn't you see how embarrassed they both looked?"

Sasha scowled. " _He_  didn't."

" _Yes_ , he did."

"Anyway, even if he is embarrassed, it's because he knows how lame she is. She's soooo boring. I mean, Third Melody? Urgh! She's even got him drinking coffee as well!"

Jody also despised Third Melody and coffee, but that wasn't the point. Molly was a nice girl, but not a stupid one; it was obvious that she could tell that Sasha and Josh had history, but despite that, she was making an effort to be friendly. How many girls would do that? Sasha wouldn't. Jody didn't think she would either, if Tyler was the boy in question. Then again, she knew all of Tyler's old flames, and he knew hers. In any case, she couldn't let Sasha continue to repay Molly's kindness with bitchiness. It was uncalled for, no matter what Sasha thought.

"You just ordered coffee yourself," she pointed out, picking the conversation right back up. "What are you playing at?"

"Nothing!"

"I'm telling you again: just stop it. Josh is with Molly, not you."

"And I'm telling you: stop telling me what to do!" Sasha growled, curling her hands up into fists. "I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just showing him that she isn't right for him. I'm saving him."

"Saving him?" Jody repeated in astonishment. From what? "You're delusional."

Sasha looked as if she was going to retort but Josh and Molly returned just then, forcing her to hold her tongue. Unable to continue watching Sasha be childish, she unlocked her phone and texted Ryan to ask how he and the others were faring with the regional eco-challenge Mike, May-Li and Charlie had forced the rest of the household into. This turned out to be a huge mistake, though, because while she'd taken her eyes off Sasha for one second, said girl had placed her cup of coffee in the middle of her artwork, and Molly had subsequently tipped it over.

"My portfolio!" Sasha wailed, rising to her feet. "It's ruined!" She was a good actress, Jody would have to give her that; the artwork she'd brought in today were all copies, the originals being safely stored away at home.

Molly apologised profusely, tears springing to her eyes, and Josh tried to calm both her and Sasha down, insisting it was an accident. Molly even tried to help control the damage but Sasha snapped at her, telling her to go away, and Jody could only shake her head in disgust at the triumphant smirk Sasha donned as Molly fled. Sasha's face soon fell, though, as Josh chased after his girlfriend.

"Why is he going after her?!" she demanded with a glower. " _I'm_  the victim here!"

Jody rounded on her. "The victim?!" she spat, slamming her hand down on the picnic bench. "Who are you trying to fool right now?! We both know you did that on purpose!" Sasha didn't say a word in response. "Well, are you happy now?!"

"Just leave it," Sasha muttered, throwing the empty coffee cup on the ground. "Let's go. You wanted to look around a bit more, right?"

"Right," Jody replied, watching Sasha dejectedly walk off in the direction Molly and Josh had gone.

.:. QK .:.

After having a proper look around to see what the various colleges had to offer, a still-undecided Jody had grabbed as many information booklets as she could and had thrown them into her bag. She was leaning towards Sports Science, but had decided to give it serious thought later because she'd been too concerned about Sasha to think straight.

Kev had picked the two of them up from the fair during the lunch break and now here they were, eating lunch at Sasha's with her family. Jody tried to listen to Dexter as he talked her ear off but her attention was mostly on Sasha who was barely eating and kept checking her phone every five seconds. She finally understood why when Kev returned to the dining room after checking who'd rung the doorbell, with the news that some guy was waiting for Sasha out front. If she had any doubt as to who the visitor was, the 'I told you so' look that Sasha shot her before getting up and leaving told her everything she needed to know.

"Does Sasha have a boyfriend?" Kelly, Sasha's mum, asked, looking at Jody in surprise. "She never told me."

"Uhh, she didn't the last time I checked," Jody answered, shifting uncomfortably. Given her history with bad relationships, Kelly ought to have at least expressed some sort of concern over Sasha potentially seeing a boy but she did no such thing, appearing to find the whole situation exciting instead. Jody tried not to roll her eyes as Kelly prodded Dex for details.

"I don't know, Mum," Dex replied, making a face. "Why would she ever tell me something like that?"

"Because siblings have secrets; I always told your uncle everything... before he died. Anyway, c'mon, you have a girlfriend yourself, so it must've come up in conversation at one point!"

"It _really_  didn't."

"I didn't like the look of that boy," Kev announced, frowning. Jody inwardly sighed in relief; at least someone in this household had a little bit of sense. "For one, he looks far too old for her."

Kelly smirked. "I had a bit of a thing for older boys myself when I was her age. What is he, seventeen, eighteen? College-age, right?"

Kev shook his head. "More like university age. Older than Roddy. He looked at least twenty."

That seemed to knock some sense into Kelly. "Twenty!" she exclaimed, wiping Murphy's mouth with a tissue. "She's only sixteen!"

"It's not the first time," Dex piped up, speaking with his mouth full. He stopped, perhaps remembering that they had a guest over, and swallowed before speaking again. "Back when we were at Ashdene Ridge, Sasha went out with this guy called Josh. He was, like, eighteen, and he was a plumber. I didn't like him; he messed her about." He turned to Jody. "You remember him, right?"

"Err, yeah," she responded, pretending to be very invested in the food. "He did stand her up, but it was because of an emergency or something. He apologised later." However much she didn't like Josh, she didn't want him to get into trouble for the wrong thing. He still had no business being here, though. He was just as bad as Sasha, if not worse, when it came to behaving recklessly. Poor Molly.

"Right," Kelly said, rising to her feet. "I'm going to go out there and see what this is about. Watch Murphy for me, Kev."

Not three minutes later, she returned with Sasha and Josh, offering the latter some snacks. She appeared to have got over the age gap already, mothering Josh as if he was one of her sons. Dex regarded Josh with wide eyes, proceeding to tell Kev that this Josh and that Josh were one and the same, and when he went over to say hi, Jody shot Sasha a meaningful look, beckoning her over to the doorway of the kitchen. Sasha complied, but took her sweet, sweet time in doing so.

"What's he doing here," Jody asked, crossing her arms, "and where's Molly?"

"They broke up," Sasha answered smugly. "It was mutual. She's fine with it."

Glancing at Josh, Jody took in the pleased expression on his face and refrained from snorting, her eyes flitting back to her friend. "Quick turn-around, though. He really doesn't waste his time, does he?"

She expected Sasha to get angry but said girl only shrugged her shoulders and smiled serenely. "Why would he? He knows that we're meant to be. You can't fight fate, Jody. You know that better than anyone."

Huh? Surely, she didn't mean...? "You better not be saying what I think you're saying."

"And what's that?" Sasha asked innocently.

Looking around the kitchen and seeing that everyone was still around, Jody dragged Sasha out of there and up the stairs to her bedroom. Well, she didn't drag her, because  _no one_  dragged Sasha, but she led the way and Sasha followed. "Were you talking about me and Tyler just now? When you talked about fate?"

"Yeah," Sasha responded, raising her eyebrow. "Wasn't that obvious?"

Jody exhaled shortly. How could Sasha compare her relationship with Josh to that of Jody and Tyler's? It was insulting. "Get real, Sasha! I've known Tyler nearly half my life. Josh is just some guy you went out with once, two years ago, and suddenly ran into again today."

Sasha's face became red. "For your information, it's only been a year and a half, and me and Josh have been in contact the whole time! You can ask my social worker!"

"Why would I want to ask her that? Anyway, that's not the point!"

"Well, what is the point then?!"

"He's not right for you, and you are definitely not right for him. Guys like him, they're only after one thing!"

"Oh, so now you're the expert!" Sasha shouted, placing her hands on her hips. "Just because you've already had one boyfriend who, might I remind you, you dumped for someone else! How is that any better than what Josh did?! At least, for him and Molly, it was mutual!"

Jody pursed her lips, heat rushing to her cheeks. She hadn't dumped Brandon  _for_  Tyler, but if she'd carried on with him after he'd asked her to Florida, she would've ended up doing exactly that. Was Sasha right? Was she just as bad as Josh? She sighed. "Look, Sasha, I'm only trying to look out for you. Josh is bad news. You've got to trust me on that."

Sasha's features softened. She sighed too. Jody nearly smiled; everyone was always saying how alike she and Sasha were, which she never believed, but it was moments like this where their similarities really shone through. "I know. You're a good friend... but you don't know Josh like I do. We've got so much in common, and he gets me. And I get him. You understand that, right?"

How could she not? She knew that feeling better than anyone. All any kid in care, or former kid in care, ever wanted was for someone to understand them and love them. After so many years, she finally had that. How could she begrudge Sasha the same thing? "I suppose."

"Then let me be happy. I'm a big girl, and I can look after myself."

Opening her mouth, Jody wanted to say that yes, Sasha did deserve happiness, but that Josh was not the right guy to give it to her, but for some reason, the words failed her. She closed her mouth, feeling stupid.

"Anyways, I'm sixteen now," Sasha continued, twiddling her thumbs, "and I want to do what other sixteen-year-olds are doing."

Jody's face only got hotter, if that were possible, as she remembered their phone conversation last month where Sasha had declared that she was 'legal'. "Oh."

Sasha actually blushed and Jody looked away, wishing a hole would open up in the ground and swallow her whole. It wasn't as if she'd never thought about it—she and Tyler had been discussing kids only a few weeks ago—but it still felt so far away. Perhaps she was a little naive; she'd certainly never thought that at this point in her life, she'd have friends who were thinking about doing  _it_. She wondered if some of her friends already had, particularly Chris and April, who'd been dating since Year Nine.

"And because I'm a small person, I'm really gonna need someone who gets me. Because it might be... difficult. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah," she said, before taking a deep breath. "So there's nothing I can say or do to change your mind? About him, I mean, not... y'know."

The answer was a clear, precise: "No."

"Alright," she conceded, nodding. Sasha was nothing if not stubborn and determined. This was going to have to be one of those inevitable mistakes everyone made in their lives and hopefully learnt from.

"Girls?!" Kelly hollered, sounding as if she was standing at the foot of the stairs. "Is everything alright? I thought I just heard shouting?!"

Sasha and Jody exchanged glances, the former shouting back that they were fine.

"Come on," Sasha said, jerking her head towards the door. "Let's go back down. Josh is probably wondering where I am."

.:. QK .:.

After spending around another hour at Sasha's place, Kev gave Jody a lift back to Ashdene Ridge. She smiled and thanked him, and he told her to take care, but as he drove away, she still couldn't shake her disappointment in his step-daughter. Sasha was just so obstinate, so stuck in her ways, and while Jody had reluctantly decided to step back and let her make the mistake of dating Josh, she worried that Sasha wouldn't learn from it. Before Josh, there had been that thieving wastrel, Tommo. What if Sasha was just attracted to bad guys, like a moth to flame? What if she ended up like her (pre-Kev) mother?

"Hey, how was the college fair?" May-Li asked as Jody walked in through the front door, snapping her out of her thoughts. "Did you find anything you liked?"

"It was alright," she answered, adjusting the bag strap on her shoulder. "And yeah, I did, actually. I'm thinking of going for a Sports Science BTEC. I've just got to decide what college; I want one close to here."

"I could help you pick later on, if you want?" Jody nodded. "Good subject choice, by the way; I think you'd be great at it!"

"Thanks!"

All of a sudden, May-Li held up a finger and told her to wait a second before going into the quiet room. A few seconds later, she emerged with a black carry labelled 'art portfolio'. "You were with Sasha, right?"

"Yeah; I had lunch at hers and her stepdad dropped me off just now. Am I in trouble? I told Mike about my plans ages ago and he said it was alright."

May-Li chuckled. "No, you're not in any trouble. In fact, you escaped a disappointing lunch, so kudos to you. It's just that we had a visitor while you were out—a girl around your age—and she said that she put this portfolio together to make up for Sasha's ruined artwork."

"Oh, yeah, Molly," Jody said, only just remembering the girl. Between her big life decision and Sasha's big life mistake, she'd totally forgotten about her, even though she was sort of at the centre of said mistake. "We, uhh, actually ran into Josh. You know, that plumber Sasha dated? Anyway, Molly's his girlfriend—well, she was until they broke up a couple of hours ago—and long story short, she accidentally spilt coffee on Sasha's portfolio when we were sitting out back together." She really wanted to tell the truth because lying was unfair on Molly but she didn't want May-Li to think badly of Sasha either.

"Ahh, I guess that explains why the poor thing looked so upset when she walked through the door."

Jody raised an eyebrow. Upset? "Sorry?"

"Oh, Molly looked quite upset when she came round. I thought it was because of the artwork, but it must have been because of the break-up. Anyway, do you know if Sasha's going to be coming round anytime soon because we'll have to mail this to her if not?"

"I wouldn't know. She's pretty busy..." Now that Sasha was with Josh, she probably wouldn't even think to visit Ashdene Ridge. Even Dex didn't visit as much anymore because Archie and Joseph had both left. "How come Molly brought it here, anyway? Sasha never told her that she used to live here."

May-Li distractedly checked the time on her watch. "She said she was leaving it here because you said you lived here but she doesn't know where Sasha lives. And, of course, we're not allowed to share former residents' personal information with members of the public so we couldn't tell her where to take it."

Now that Jody thought about it, she vaguely recalled mentioning Ashdene Ridge in front of Molly when Ryan had first texted her about the eco-challenge. "Ah, okay."

Muttering about how busy she was, May-Li stalked off towards the kitchen, leaving Jody alone with her thoughts. So, Molly was upset about the break-up, even though it was mutual? Well, Jody herself had been upset after breaking up with Brandon too, and she'd been the one to initiate it, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility, but something didn't seem quite right. The break-up had seemed awfully convenient from the get-go. She hadn't said anything earlier because she hadn't wanted to upset Sasha further but was it possible that Josh had dumped Molly for Sasha? If so, what, if anything, could she do about it? Sasha was basically Luke right now: unwanting and unwilling to hear a bad word about the person she 'loved'. Would she listen to reason?


	42. Chapter 42

A week after her collapse, Jody stepped into the gym for the first time following her trials. Upon walking in, she scanned the vicinity with fresh eyes, reminiscing about the first time she'd entered as a member. She'd been so excited back then, so full of energy, and, to her, boxing had still been solely about channelling her anger and aggression into something positive and useful. Somehow, along the way, particularly the last month, she'd lost sight of that.

Wanting to make a career out of boxing wasn't a bad thing, but she'd gone about it all wrong; she'd trained so often and so rigorously that she'd sucked all the fun out of the sport, making it nothing more than another chore in her long list of daily tasks. Of course, she still wanted to be a boxing champ but first, she wanted to love boxing again.

"Hey, Jody!"

Hearing her ex-boyfriend's voice, she spun around to see him jogging over to her, wearing the same shy smile he always wore.

"Hi, Brandon," she greeted, genuinely returning his smile. Looking at him, she fondly recalled the moment they'd become sparring partners. As her first partner, both in boxing and a relationship, he held a special place in her heart that no one else could take. She wondered if he knew that.

He dug his hands into his pockets, his lips faltering slightly. "I heard what happened last week, and I wanted to make sure you were okay. Actually, I found out from Emily the day after it happened, and I worried when I didn't see you here after that."

"It's sweet that you worried but I'm fine. I wasn't gone because I was ill, or anything like that. It's just that after what happened, I decided not to come in again until after the trials were over and I got my college application in." He nodded, visibly relieved. "By the way, you didn't have to wait for me to come in to ask how I was. You could've just texted me."

"Really?" he asked tentatively, seemingly surprised by her statement. "I mean, that would've been okay?"

She understood his reticence; they hadn't texted since they'd broken up. Since she was the one who'd initiated the break-up, it'd been up to her to text him first, to establish that she wouldn't find him texting her awkward. It was one of those simple, unwritten rules about dating (or, rather, breaking up). How had she forgotten that?

"Yeah, of course," she answered, wringing her hands together. "Whatever happened between us last year, we're still friends, aren't we?"

His bashful smile returned in full force. "Yeah."

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a dark head of hair whiz past the punching bags. So, she wasn't the only one to have returned after a mysterious absence. Suggesting that they spar together sometime, she told Brandon she'd talk to him in a bit before approaching the punching bags.

Amy paused upon seeing her, donning a smirk. "Well, well, well, look who's back after a lengthy absence."

Jody chuckled, shoving her hands into her pockets. Despite not always getting along with Amy, it was somewhat good to see that she was still her sardonic self. After her collapse, Jody had worried that something similar had happened to Amy and that that was why she hadn't been in on that fateful day; with the obsessive, sometimes manic way said girl carried on, such a scenario was highly likely. "I could say the same about you. When did you get back?"

"Get back from where?"

"From wherever you were on Saturday."

"I was here yesterday," Amy said, shaking her head in apparent amusement. "Where were you?"

"I was at a college fair," Jody replied, setting her gym bag on the floor. "But I didn't mean yesterday Saturday; I meant the one before that."

For the first time since Jody had known her, Amy had nothing smart or snarky to say in response. Rather, all she did was briefly look down, press her lips together in a thin line, shrug, and then continue working on her punches. Jody watched on in astonishment, unsure of what to make of her sparring partner's behaviour, until Jess' remarks from the day of her collapse suddenly came to mind; Jess had been rude enough to her as a mere associate of Amy's, so she could only imagine what sort of words the girl herself received. Now, Amy didn't seem to be the type to allow herself to be bullied, let alone let it her affect her to the point where she'd decide not to come to the gym anymore, but Jody didn't know her all  _that_  well, so it couldn't be ruled out as a possibility.

Taking a glance around the gym, she noticed that Jess and Emily weren't in today, which seemed to support her theory.

"Say," she began, drawing Amy's attention again, "the gym looks a little empty today. Where are the other girls?"

Amy scoffed, continuing to work on the punching bag in front of her. "You mean Watson, Taylor and all of that lot?" Jody hadn't a clue who those people were but nodded nonetheless. "They don't come in at all between the trials and the day of the announcement. They did that last year as well."

Jody raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"They think they're too good to have to practice in between. They don't understand the dedication and amount of work required to represent our region. That's why they didn't make it last year."

Typical Amy. She was the walking, talking definition of 'all work and no play', but it didn't make her 'dull' like it did Jack. If anything, it endeared her to Jody in a bizarre kind of way. However, that wasn't to say that Jody approved of Amy's lifestyle. It was still wholly unhealthy, and set a dangerous precedent for others; in her desperation to prove her worth to her family, friends, and Amy herself, she'd taken the same approach to training, with disastrous results. She was lucky she hadn't landed herself in hospital.

"Did  _you_?" she asked, biting her lip.

Momentarily glancing at Jody, Amy readjusted her gloves before delivering her hardest punch yet, making the punching bag fly like the one that'd knocked Brandon to the floor upon his and Jody's first meeting. "No," she answered, wiping the sweat from her brow, "but I know I did this time."

The heat mixed with a flurry of intense emotions, mostly negative ones, radiating off her was palpable, and as someone who wanted to gently ease herself back into boxing, Jody was forced to take a step back. She'd only just regained her health and however much she liked Amy, she couldn't let said girl drag her back down into that dark, lonely place.

"I'll see you later," she said as she backed away some more, hoping she sounded polite enough. "I told Brandon I'd spar with him."

Nodding, Amy sent her on her way.

.:. QK .:.

The cold February wind blew at Jody's ears as she knocked on her brother's door, jumping on the balls of her feet. She tried not to let her discomfort show as a trio of gangsters slunk past her, howling loudly in amusement. At least, she thought they were amused; either that, or they were high. Despite only having been here twice before, she already disliked the neighbourhood, and still couldn't believe that her brother's prissy girlfriend had agreed to live in such a rundown area; she wouldn't bat an eyelid if she were to learn that the neighbours were all drug dealers, thieves, or both.

After a decent amount of time had passed, Jody frowned and knocked again. Was no one home? She'd only come by because she had some rare free time and because Luke had told her on many occasions that he was always off on the weekends. Had he accompanied Millie to her mother's place or something? She sighed. Perhaps she should've checked with him before randomly showing up but the thought hadn't crossed her mind; she'd been too preoccupied with figuring out how she was going to finally tell him about Gray and Amy.

Hard footfalls approached from the left but she didn't bother turning to see who it was, assuming it was another one of Luke's wastrel neighbours. Only when she heard a soft utterance of her name did she whip her head to the side to see her brother walking up to her with a surprised expression on his face, carrying half a dozen shopping bags in his hands.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, not unkindly.

"Well, I was waiting out here like an idiot for you to open the door," she answered, shivering. "I didn't realise there'd be no one at home."

His eyebrows knotted together. "Did you knock?"

"Yeah, twice."

Muttering something to himself, he transferred the bags in his left hand to his right and began fishing around for something in his pockets. Jody wordlessly took some of the bags from his overburdened hand, and as he continued to search for what she presumed was the key, she peeked into one of the bags, recoiling when she saw disgustingly healthy food. Looking into the other bags, she saw the same sort of stuff. She was trying to be healthy too, but did indulge in snacks once in a while; Luke seemed to be healthy, full stop. However, she hadn't seen the contents of the other bags, the ones he was still holding, yet, so perhaps there was still hope.

Letting out a triumphant noise, Luke took the key out of his pocket and waved it at her before slotting it into the lock and turning it. Pushing the door open, he gestured for her to go in first, and as she stepped into the narrow hallway and looked around, she heard him close the door behind her.

"You can give me the bags," he suggested, his body half-turned towards the kitchen.

"Nah, it's fine," she said, walking past him with a smile. She placed the bags on the counter, noting the unwashed dishes in the sink. They weren't the only things that needed cleaning; back in the hallway, she'd caught a glimpse of the living room which had looked like a right mess. It was mind-boggling because the last two times she'd been here, the kitchen, as well as the rest of the house, had been impeccably clean. "I'm used to it; Mike and May-Li have us do this stuff all the time."

Luke thanked her as he put the other bags down on the counter, only to let out a sigh when his gaze fell upon the sink. He looked back at her with a tight-lipped smile, telling her he'd be back in a minute before storming off into the hallway. She bit her lip, wondering if she'd decided to visit at the wrong time, when Luke re-entered the kitchen with a blonde woman by his side. This woman she recognised immediately as the one from virtually every framed photo throughout the flat: Millie.

"But I thought I told you to do them," Millie told Luke, haughtily placing her hands on her hips. The action made her nightwear bunch up at the waist, and Jody couldn't help but notice that her brother's girlfriend was plumper than she was in the photos, especially around the belly. Millie, however, didn't seem to notice that there was another female in the room as she rolled her eyes and ambled towards the sink.

"I went out to do the shopping," Luke replied, gesturing towards the numerous bags on the counter.

"So? I didn't ask you to do that. I told you that  _I_  would do the shopping this week, meaning that the washing up was your responsibility." Jody winced, feeling like an intruder witnessing something that wasn't meant for her eyes.

"But when exactly were you going to go to the shops? It was past noon already and we had nothing to make lunch with. You were still asleep!"

Millie whirled around towards Luke, her eyes flashing with fury. "Don't raise your voice at me just because I'm the woman here, Luke! Do the bloody dishes; I've got work to do on the laptop! And when you're done with that, clear up the mess in the living room!"

Luke sighed. "At least help me. I've got a visitor."

"Can't you do  _anything_  on your own?" She finally turned towards Jody and laid eyes upon her, looking her up and down, before turning back to her boyfriend. "If you really can't manage, then  _she_  can help you!"

Jody could do nothing but watch on in stunned silence as Millie walked off without another word, leaving behind a very embarrassed looking Luke. What had just happened? Was this what it was always like? She stood rooted to her spot as her brother shook his head and made his way towards the sink, wanting to offer him her help but barely stopping herself as she realised it would only embarrass him further because of what Millie had just said.

"Uhh, Luke," she began tentatively, pulling at her sleeve, "is it alright if I go and sit down?"

"Sure," he responded quickly, his voice hoarse. He kept his back turned to her. "I'll be with you in a minute."

She nodded meekly, even though he couldn't see her, and gingerly made her way towards the living room. Perhaps now wasn't the best time to tell him about Gray. After all, what good would it do to mention their (or, just his?) deadbeat father when he already had one of those for a girlfriend?

.:. QK .:.

"Higher," Brandon instructed.

Jody did as she was told, holding the punching mitts up higher, but didn't really focus on him, her mind still reeling from her short stay at her brother's place. She felt miserable, all choked up in the throat area, ashamed that only last year, she would've thought that Luke deserved to be treated in such a manner just because he'd ignored her for a while. No one deserved that sort of treatment, no one. She wouldn't even wish it on Ryan.

As she thought about it longer and longer, however, her upset slowly morphed into anger; anger at Millie for the vitriol she'd meted out to Luke, and also anger at Luke himself for just standing there and taking it.

"Actually," she found herself saying loudly, causing Brandon to cease, "I think I do wanna work on my hand speed today."

Brandon looked a little surprised at her change of heart but complied with her wishes nonetheless, taking his boxing gloves off as Jody unstrapped the punching mitts from her hands. She passed the mitts to him before putting her own gloves on and before she knew it, she was releasing all of her rage and frustration into those same mitts.

She thought she'd seen the worst of Luke and Millie's relationship in their kitchen but that had been nothing. Around five minutes into her chat with Luke, after he'd cleared everything up on his own, Millie had strode into the living room, complaining about the food he'd bought. Not a little complaint either, like the sort that Mike and May-Li directed at one other whenever the weekly food order went a little wrong, but a full-blown tirade about how she'd wanted milk chocolate chip cookies, not white chocolate. Luke had begun to explain that the bakery had run out of milk chocolate chip but Millie hadn't wanted to listen, cutting him off to rant about another one of his 'mistakes'. That was when Jody had lost it, clearing her throat and straight up saying, "It's just a cookie".

Millie had stared at her, eyes popping out like a cartoon, lip curled up in disgust, and had then sneered all hyenalike, insisting that her conversation with Luke wasn't any of Jody's business. Jody had wanted to punch the bitch right then and there but Luke had held her hand, silently shaking his head, before pathetically apologising to Millie for 'everything'. Later, after Millie had gone back to their room with her head held high, he'd turned to Jody and told her that relationships weren't easy, as if that somehow absolved Millie of her behaviour.

To be honest, his words troubled her. Did all adult relationships devolve into  _that_  after the novelty faded away? Would Mike and Fiona eventually start sniping at each other like that after a year? Sally and Kamal? Had Alice and May-Li, having been married for a while now, already reached that low point? Jody gulped; would she and Tyler, too, grow to hate one another one day?

"Oh," Brandon said, snapping her out of her thoughts. She noticed that he'd turned his head and followed his line of sight to see Bernadette pinning a list to the board. He turned back to her, beaming. "I think this is it."

Clearing her mind of Luke and Millie, if only for a while, she took her gloves off and walked to the board with Brandon. The two of them exchanged looks upon seeing that it was the girls' list, and he patted her on the arm in encouragement. Scanning the list, she spotted the names Jess Watson and Emily Taylor amongst others but didn't see a mention of a Gray.

Looking around, she was relieved to see that Amy wasn't around. She smiled at Brandon, not having expected to make the team anyway, but couldn't help but feel that her boxing-obsessed sparring partner would take her own failure very badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Who's seen the Series 7B trailer? As soon as I heard that the actress who plays Piper would be coming back for the prom episode, I had the sneaky feeling that Piper would get in between Jyler. Looks like I was right, unfortunately. I don't know what the writers are trying to do here. I mean, why would Tyler go after Piper after what he told Jody in 'Run The Risk'? It makes no sense. I think I'll hold off from watching 7B until I've finished this fic because I just know I'm going to lose the motivation to write Jyler after seeing that episode, even if Tyler ends up choosing Jody over Piper. Jody and Brandon was one thing since it only happened because Tyler wouldn't own up to his feelings but him even thinking of taking Piper to prom instead of Jody after the confession in 'No Escaping' just ruins Jyler for me. Looks like it gets worse in the romance department in general because Alex seems to want to forget his kiss with Charlie (?). The other stuff sounds good, though: Finn meeting a girl, Bird entering a comedy contest, Chloe doing online dating (?), Chloe and Candi actually being besties again, Mike going nude, new girls... Looks like things are going to become crazy. Can't wait!**


	43. Chapter 43

By March, Jody had settled back into the gym, having become Amy's regular sparring partner once more. As for Amy, she had, to Jody's relief, taken not getting into the regional team surprisingly well. Rather, she behaved as if the list of names had never gone up on the noticeboard, continuing to take digs at Jess, Emily, and the other girls, though Jody sometimes tried to stop her, ignoring their comments about her not being in the team, and training as if she had proper matches coming up right around the corner. Jody took it a little more easily, taking each day as it came and just being grateful that she'd been able to get back into the ring at all after the prior month's drama.

Today, however, she was running a little late. May-Li had had to pop out for an emergency, and since Mike had already been out accompanying Charlie on a supervised visit to the local prison, she'd been forced to leave Jody in charge of the young'uns, even though Ryan and Alex were both older, until the respite care worker could arrive and take over. Getting off the bus, which she could now afford again because she'd paid Tyler back, Jody jogged to the front of the gym and immediately made her way to the changing rooms. She usually changed into her gym wear before leaving the house but between Taz yelling at Sid and Floss and Jay falling out, she simply hadn't had the time. Finding an untouched spot in the corner, she began to strip down to her underwear, but soon realised she wasn't alone; a voice reached her ears from the other side of the room, where the tiny one-pound lockers were located. A voice she recognised well.

"Yes, Mum, I'm fine... Yeah, I just sparred right now... Coach says I'm doing great."

Jody raised an eyebrow. Amy didn't usually spar with the others because they either didn't like her or were scared of her. And coach? What coach? Only the people in the Junior, Youth and Elite boxing teams had coaches; the rest of them, the recreational boxers as they were known, only had gym trainers.

"Well,  _you_  can tell him. I'm tired of being stuck in the middle, and it's not just me. It makes"—a locker door creaked, muffling some of the speech—"too. Just because he's always smiling like an idiot, it doesn't mean he doesn't care!" Jody suddenly heard a sniff and froze. Was there someone else in the room besides herself and Amy, witnessing her eavesdropping on her sparring partner? Working up the guts, she cautiously peered around the corner but saw no one else around. Then, another sniff made its way to her ears, only this time it was obvious that it was coming from Amy herself. "No, it's not because of that. It's because I wish we were  _fucking_  normal!"

 _Normal_. Jody remembered wishing for the same thing as a four-year-old, thinking that 'Daddy' could've made that happen by coming back and making 'Mummy' and the rest of them happy. It'd never happened, of course, and even though she was happy now, she'd never quite reached the state of being normal. Was that even possible as a care kid? There was nothing normal about having to tick 'carer' instead of 'parent' or even 'guardian' on a Parents' Evening slip. She shook her head—there was plenty of time for dark thoughts when she was in the ring—and shrugged her comfy sports hoodie on, realising that Amy had stopped speaking but was still sniffing. She suddenly felt guilty; Amy crying just seemed wrong, almost impossible, and she felt wrong for having sneakily listened in on such a thing.

Placing the last of her casualwear into her bag, she patiently waited for Amy to leave the room before doing the same.

.:. QK .:.

Later on, as they trained together, Jody was unable to tear her eyes away from her sparring partner. It was as if what she'd heard in the changing rooms had opened her eyes to something, perhaps the fact that things in Amy's life weren't as they should be, and now she couldn't unsee it; the bags under Amy's eyes were suddenly all too glaring and her pasty pale skin, too pale to be healthy, hard to miss. She couldn't believe she'd never noticed before. Not once had she thought that Amy's life was perfect but she hadn't thought that things were bad enough to bring the girl to the point of tears either. That too, on a phone call with her mother, the parent she was supposed to be fond of.

"Are you alright?" she found herself asking, against her better judgement.

Amy narrowed her eyes. "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

Jody was quick to answer. "No reason."

"There's no such thing as 'no reason'. No one ever asks anything for 'no reason'. Spill."

Wincing, Jody knew she was done for. Amy was known around the gym by face, if not name, for her anger, and took the invasion of her privacy especially badly. One time, around a month ago, one of the other girls had stolen one of her shoes 'for fun' and had paid the price by getting punched square in the face. The worst part was that the gym trainer on duty that day, the one who'd alerted Jody to the fact that she and Amy had the same last names, had treated the incident as a mid-spar error and thus Amy had got off lightly. If she had to guess, Amy would consider eavesdropping a worse violation than her shoes being stolen, and rightly so.

Despite that, Jody couldn't bring herself to lie. Rather, she couldn't come up with a believable one that would explain why she was concerned about Amy in the first place. If Amy tried to punch her, she would just have to retaliate. After all, they were at the gym.

"I, uhh, I didn't come straight here today," she confessed, mentally preparing to defend herself if necessary. Amy widened her eyes and shook her head as if to say 'so?'. "I went to the locker room first, to change out of my home clothes."

The implications behind Jody's words seemed to dawn on Amy fairly quickly as she narrowed her eyes again and pursed her lips but none of the things Jody had expected from rage and yelling to stomping and punching came to pass. Instead, Amy cast a glance around their surroundings before leaning in and saying, "Tell anyone, and I'll thump you."

Relaxing, Jody dropped her (mental) defensive stance but crossed her arms. No matter how much she'd calmed down over the years, she didn't take kindly to being spoken to like that. She'd already had to silently bear Millie's domineering attitude last week; she wasn't going to take the same from her possible younger sister.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," she said, the corners of her lips twitching, "but I doubt you could thump me."

Amy scoffed. "Oh, yeah? You wanna bet on that?"

"No," Jody answered honestly, licking her lip. "I know I could still take you, though." Amy rolled her eyes; Jody forced herself to keep a straight face. "Like I said, I won't tell anyone,  _if_ "—all traces of amusement promptly disappeared from Amy's face—"you tell me why you lied to your mum."

That sure elicited a reaction out of Amy; she flared her nostrils, her eyes wildly darting around the gym, and just when Jody thought she was safe, Amy grabbed her wrist and dragged her to a secluded corner. Jody's initial shock wore off as Amy's vice-like grip began to hurt, and she managed to shrug the younger girl off.

"Oww!" she let out, taking her right punching mitt off and proceeding to rub her stinging left wrist. "A little warning would've been nice."

Amy stared back at her, unapologetic. "Like how you just warned me?"

"I wasn't actually going to do it! Why would I tell anyone that? No one 'round here would believe me, anyway; they don't like me because I spar with you."

"That's not true," she insisted, her tone a little sombre. "Dalton still likes you, even though you two broke up."

Jody smiled small. "No one besides him, then." Amy raised an eyebrow, placing her hands on her hips. Jody sighed. "Look, Amy, I really wasn't going to tell anyone. I just said it to get the truth out of you."

She didn't understand. Why would Amy lie to her mum that she'd sparred or that she had a coach? What did she hope to achieve?

"Look, you don't have to spar with me," Amy said, averting her gaze. That was a first; she was never shy about making eye contact, or rather, staring other people in the face. "One of the other girls who didn't get in left; you can take her partner. It's not too late to get the others to like you. Just tell the idiots that you don't like me and watch how they fall at your feet."

"I don't want them to like me," Jody replied, frowning. "And that doesn't answer my question. Why did you lie?"

Amy's eyes immediately snapped back to hers. "That's none of your business."

Jody felt her temper rise at the familiar words. Yes it is, she wanted to say, because you're my sister, but let the words dissolve on the tip of her tongue; she couldn't say that without one-hundred per cent surety. "You know, lying never gets anyone anywhere. Actually, forget that. Think about your mum. What did she do to deserve it?"

"You don't know my parents!" Amy suddenly snapped, her eyes flashing dangerously. She took the punching mitts from Jody, yanking the remaining one straight off Jody's hand. "I'm heading off to the punching bags. You can go home now like you always do."

Noting the time on the gym's huge digital clock, Jody decided to pack it in for the day. Not because Amy had dismissed her, but because she still had homework to do. In any case, she'd promised many people, including herself, that she wouldn't burn herself out again and she was determined to keep her word. She was lucky she had people who cared for her. Perhaps Amy didn't.

.:. QK .:.

A couple of hours later, Jody sat at the foot of Tyler's bed, finishing up her Science homework. Over the last few days, she'd discovered that Tyler's place was a much more conducive environment for actually concentrating on studying and getting her work done. At Ashdene Ridge, it was a very different story. Mike and May-Li did their best to get everyone to study at the same time, in their own rooms, to encourage peace and quiet but it hardly ever worked; once left to their own devices, the younger kids got bored and started jumping around, making noise, which meant that the older ones, including Jody herself, often became distracted and reached for their mobile phones. Jody honestly didn't know how she'd managed until now.

She wasn't entirely undistracted over here, though. Every once in a while, she found herself peering up from her work to look over at Tyler who was sat on the other side of the bed, surrounded by a mountain of textbooks. She didn't even know why she did it—it just seemed to happen on its own—but she relished in the stupid giddy feeling she got whenever he looked up at the same time as her and their eyes met. Like now.

This time, however, he broke the silence. "Do you want something to eat?"

"I shouldn't," she answered, only for her stomach to rumble. She blushed as his eyebrows comically flew upwards. "It's nearly six. Mike and May-Li are gonna kill me if they find out I snacked before dinner."

"Who says they're gonna find out?"

"You know what they're like. They'll sniff it out like a couple of retrievers and then out me in front of the whole table."

"True, true," he agreed, but smiled expectantly at her.

Sure enough, she grinned in return. "But let's go anyway?"

Without another word, they leapt off the bed and raced downstairs, like they used to at Ashdene Ridge when their shared bowl of popcorn ran out. It amazed her that she could sit there on his bed and think not so appropriate thoughts about him but then act like a child around him,  _with_  him, the very next second.

She reached the kitchen first, less than a second ahead of him. "Ha! Beat you!"

"Didn't want to trample you on the stairs, did I?" he asked breathlessly, placing a hand on the nearby counter. "Oh, Mum's not here. Now's our chance!"

Tyler proceeded to rummage around for cookies in one of the cupboards, and Jody took on her old role of look-out. She noticed a pot on low boil, indicating that the family were not ordering takeaway tonight, and wondered just where Sally and Kamal were. Kamal had returned from overseeing his business with Tyler before Jody had arrived, and she knew that Sally was off today because she'd come up to Tyler's room earlier to check on them. She suppressed a giggle, recalling Sally's stern reminder to keep the bedroom door open at all times.

As Tyler finally located a jar of cookies, the patio door slid open and Jody jumped to attention. She tried not to look dodgy as she felt Tyler press a cookie into her hand from behind the counter, slipping it into her pocket as Sally, Kamal and a vaguely familiar young woman all walked in from the garden. Tyler popped up from further behind the counter, right in front of the sink, muttering that he'd dropped something.

"Oh, hi Tyler," the young woman said, smiling cheerfully. He replied in kind, grabbing a glass and turning the tap on.

"Sabrina, this is Jody," Sally introduced, looking back at the woman. "Jody, this is Sabrina, Kamal's sister."

Jody politely exchanged greetings with Sabrina, finally recognising her as the woman she'd filmed with Kamal at the church hall. She caught the glass of water Tyler slid her way and thanked him, supposing this was his excuse for the two of them being in the kitchen in the first place, and Sally watched the exchange in poorly concealed suspicion before checking on her cooking.

Kamal joined his wife at the cooker, looking over her shoulder at the pot, and then looked back at his sister, furrowing his eyebrows. "You know, Sab, I don't think there's enough for five in here."

"Try telling that to your nephew or niece," Sabrina quipped, rolling her eyes at him, albeit with a smile. "I'm starving."

Instantly and automatically, Jody's gaze dropped to Sabrina's abdomen. It looked totally flat to the untrained eye but as Sabrina lightly patted it, her blouse pressed against an unmistakable swell, and at that moment, Jody knew her brother was a goner because Millie's stomach had looked exactly the same last week.

Here, Kamal was going to be an uncle again, and back at the rundown estate, Jody was going to become an aunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I really regret watching the Series 7B trailer because believe it or not, I actually planned a prom chapter ages ago. Now I'm worried that it's going to end up being too close to the actual episode. :(**


	44. Chapter 44

" _Hi, Luke here. Sorry I can't take your call right now but please leave me a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can_."

Grinding her teeth together, Jody hung up and chucked her phone into a random locker; ever since one of Jess' friends had thought it would be funny to steal her bra from her bag and put it into Brandon's, she'd been forced to use the one-pound lockers like Amy. Ignoring the incessant chatter around her, she grabbed her gumshield and boxing gloves and slammed her locker door shut.

Inside the gym, Amy was right in front of the punching bags, as expected. She snorted when Jody reached her. "What the hell happened to you? You look like shit."

"Why should I tell you?" Jody asked, hastily putting her gumshield on. She didn't care that she probably looked disgusting doing so mid-speech. She was beyond caring about anything; everything else in life seemed to pale in comparison to the fact that the devil incarnate was carrying her first niece or nephew. "You look like shit practically every single day but you don't tell me squat."

"Woah. I was just asking. No need to be such a girl about it."

"Well, I don't know about you, but I am a girl. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," Amy answered with wide eyes. "Do you wanna spar?"

Jody rolled her eyes. "Well nah. What else do you think I'm wearing a gumshield for?"

"Stop talking to me like that," Amy said, shifting uncomfortably. "I haven't done anything to you, so what's your problem?"

"Hah!" Jody exclaimed, drawing some sort of satisfaction from Amy's discomfort. "You are such a hypocrite! You talk to everyone like this all the time whether they deserve it or not. No wonder the others don't like you; you really don't help yourself."

Not in the mood for talking to anyone who wasn't Luke, she didn't bother waiting for Amy to respond, spinning on her heel and storming towards the empty ring. She didn't have to look back to see if Amy was following; she heard the hard footfalls behind her. Since it was Amy she was sparring with, Bernadette met them at the ring, telling Amy to keep the fight fair and clean. The one who ended up getting scolded for an illegal near-knockout fifteen minutes later, however, was Jody.

"Is something the matter, Jody?" Bernadette asked, offering Amy her hand. Amy batted her hand away with a scowl on her face, pushing herself up off the ring floor. "This isn't like you." Jody pressed her lips together, unwilling to answer. What would she say? That her brother wasn't answering her calls? That she thought his girlfriend was pregnant? It already sounded trivial to her; it would only sound more so to Bernadette. She just wouldn't understand. Perhaps realising she wasn't going to get anything out of Jody, Bernadette looked to Amy who was rubbing her arm and glaring at her opponent. "Amabel?"

Jody snapped her head towards Amy in surprise. Amabel? Well, that kind of explained why Brandon had thought she was 'Bella'. What kind of name was Amabel, though? She'd never heard of it. She snickered at the flustered expression on Amy—no, Amabel's face.

"What's so funny?!" Amabel demanded, clenching her fists.

"Your name. It sounds like it was made-up. Anyways, if you're Amabel, why do I call you Amy?"

Amabel shook her head at Bernadette, clearly disappointed, before looking back to Jody. "It's not made-up. It's French for 'amiable'. Amy's obviously a nickname."

Laughter bubbled up in Jody's throat, threatening to burst free. "Amiable?! Your parents must be well disappointed! And how is Amy your nickname? You're Ah-ma-bel, not Aim-uh-bel. It's like me calling myself Joey because I'm Jody. It doesn't make any sense."

"Oh, shut up! It's an old family name." Amabel tipped her head to the side, as if considering something, before adding, "But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Your dad doesn't even know you exist."

The cruel words hit Jody to the core, extinguishing what little amusement she'd drawn from taking the mick out of Amabel. Bernadette admonished Amabel, telling her she was way out of line, but that didn't make Jody feel any better. Angry tears stung at her eyes. Amabel wasn't right, exactly, but she wasn't too far off the mark; Gray knew she existed, but as far as he was concerned, she may as well have not existed, and as for Luke, it seemed as if he'd gone back to ignoring her for Millie's sake now that there was a child on the way.

Cheeks burning and blood boiling, Jody did the only thing she could to save face in front of the audience that'd somehow gathered around the ring and sate her anger: she punched Amabel square in the face. The rest was history.

.:. QK .:.

Reminiscent of the numerous chats she'd had with Mike and May-Li regarding her mother's death little over a year ago, Jody found herself sitting in the office an hour after the incident at the gym, slouching shamefully under the stern gazes of her carers. Mike had just asked her what on Earth she'd been thinking back at the gym but she hadn't yet responded. Frankly, she didn't have an answer.

There was no excuse for her behaviour. She knew that now. From the moment she'd stepped into the gym, she'd treated Amabel with nothing but contempt, releasing her frustrations regarding Luke and Millie unto her. With her temper, it was a wonder that Amabel hadn't punched Jody and knocked her out right at the beginning. Yes, Amabel's comment had been below the belt, even for her, but as the older one in the situation, Jody should've known better than to goad her into it.

"You've taken a huge step backwards, Jody," Mike said, his face stoic. "This is what the Jody of old would've done."

He was right, of course. The last time she'd punched someone outside of a sparring match was when she'd taught Ryan a lesson following her mother's funeral and while she didn't regret it, she was supposed to have learnt to deal with her emotions better since then. Up until today, she'd thought she had.

"Did the other girl say something to provoke you, Jody?" May-Li asked, her eyes kind. "I don't believe you'd do something like this without good reason. I've seen you box; I know how much it's helped you."

"There is no good reason," Jody replied quietly, looking down at her hands. "I pissed her off, she pissed me off, and then I punched her to look good in front of the other kids. End of story."

Only, no one liked her any better for what she'd done. Jess and her friends had guffawed, sure, but afterwards, they'd looked at her the same way they always looked at Amabel—as if she were mad. The boys had been impressed, of course, but that counted for very little; they'd have been just as happy if she'd grabbed Amabel and snogged her instead. She inwardly gagged at the thought.

"I don't believe that," May-Li insisted. "Did she say something about your being in care? Is that what upset you?"

Jody sighed tiredly, bringing her eyes back up to meet May-Li's. "What does it matter? I still did it, and now I'm grounded, right?"

"You are," Mike confirmed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I think it'd be best if you stayed away from the gym for a few days. Clear your head. Reflect on your actions."

She shrugged, only interested in one thing. One person. "Can I still see Tyler?"

"If he comes here to see you, then of course. He's always welcome here."

Jody blinked, having expected that answer. "Can I go to my room now? I'm tired."

Sharing a look with May-Li, Mike nodded his permission. Without wasting another second, Jody rose to her feet and silently left the room.

On her way up the stairs, she smiled grimly. Forging a new identity by reclaiming Gray's name had done nothing for her; she was still a Jackson through and through. After all, no one could rid themselves of the blood they were born with. If she was still this rotten after a year of reform, perhaps she was never going to change.

.:. QK .:.

Three days later, Luke finally called Jody back. She picked up on the first ring.

" _Hi_ ," he said, his voice thick with exhaustion. She frowned. How could he be tired already? It was barely midday. " _How are you? Sorry it took so long to get back to you; I lost my phone last week and only found it last night._ "

She resisted the urge to scoff. She wasn't stupid. The odds were strongly in favour of Millie having taken the phone and hidden it, either because she didn't want Luke to talk to Jody or because she was angry at him. Or, as was more likely, both of the above.

"S'alright," Jody answered, even though it really wasn't.

She'd been going mad sitting at home during her free hours, worrying about what would happen to her relationship with Luke if Millie was indeed pregnant. Millie had managed to keep Luke away from her for nearly a year using nothing but the sheer power of pillow-talk but now that there was quite possibly a baby on the way, she wouldn't even have to try; Luke would automatically become her slave for at least eighteen years.

A cold sweat suddenly washed over her. Would Luke ask Millie to marry him now? Surely, he would. He was already half-mad about her, for whatever reason, and the baby would only serve to propel him to the point of complete insanity. Simply put, Jody's brother was going to be lost to her forever.

" _So, any particular reason you called?_ " he asked. " _Only, I'm doing overtime today and I'm running late for lunch, so if i_ _t's not urgent, can we talk later?"_

Ahh, so now she was an inconvenience. Again. Alright, if that was how he wanted to play it...

"Yeah, it is urgent. Very urgent, actually. When were you going to tell me that I'm going to be an aunt?"

An awkward pause followed, and all that could be heard on Luke's end was the clicking of computer mouses and keyboards in the background. At Ashdene Ridge, it was a completely different story; thanks to the shit weather, everyone was stuck at home, and despite having her bedroom door firmly closed, Jody could hear the muffled chaos ensuing in the lounge downstairs.

" _H—How do you know that? Millie hasn't even told her parents yet._ "

Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach, and she swallowed deeply. She wasn't shocked exactly—she'd known the answer she was going to get before she'd even asked—but the confirmation of the 'happy' news suddenly made the situation all the more real. Her fears were no longer hypothetical; Millie was going to give birth to a new Jackson, and was undoubtedly going to become one herself.

"I'm not an idiot. At first, I thought your girlfriend was just fat but then I saw Tyler's pregnant step-aunt and put two and two together." She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Congratulations."

He sighed. " _Thanks. You're a clever girl, Jody. Cleverer than me and Kingsley both_."

She'd totally forgotten about Kingsley. Of course, if she was going to become an aunt, then he was going to become an uncle. She shuddered. Kingsley had been bad enough as a big brother, both to her and to Luke. What kind of uncle would he be? The type that rocked up to his niece's or nephew's school and asked for spare lunch money? Then again, maybe it didn't matter; the last time she'd checked, her two brothers had not been on speaking terms.

"You didn't answer my question."

" _What question?_ "

She rolled her eyes. "When you were going to tell me about the baby, Luke?"

" _Oh, of course,_ " he replied quickly. " _Sorry. I was planning to tell you after we got 'round to telling her parents. We were waiting for the twelve-week mark. You know, just to be safe._ "

So there was a lower chance of miscarriage now? What a disa—She stopped that track of thought right then and there, bile rising up in her throat. How could such a thought have crossed her mind, if even for a moment, especially regarding her own brother's child? She hadn't even had a thought like that when her least favourite teacher, a mean, spiteful bitch, had announced she was going on maternity leave at the end of Year Ten. What the fuck was wrong with her?

" _Look, Jody, I've got to go now. I'll call you later, yeah?_ "

"Yeah," she muttered, letting her phone fall out of her hand and land softly on her bed. She looked down, staring at her reflection on the small screen.

Who was this girl? She didn't recognise her.


	45. Chapter 45

Entering the lounge, Jody winced at the horrible combination of loud stereo music and Candi-Rose's shrill voice. Usually, she ignored the noise and managed to get on with doing her own thing, but given the phone call she'd had with Luke a few hours ago and had been dissecting and analysing ever since, it only served to set her teeth on edge. Speaking of phone calls, Candi seemed to be on one now to Sasha, yelling relationship advice down the line as she walked right through Sid, Taz, Floss and Finn's dance line-up. If that wasn't the definition of the blind leading the blind, then she didn't know what was.

Her eyes drifted towards the quietest two in the room, Alex and Chloe, the former perched on the arm of one of the sofas, TV remote sitting idle in his hand, and the latter sitting next to him in her wheelchair. Neither of the two was actually watching the random wildlife programme on TV, though, appearing to be totally fed up by the noise. She instantly looked away the second her gaze met Alex's; he'd been unhappy with her ever since she'd 'rained on Charlie's parade' earlier. Ryan walked in just then, a look of utter confusion spreading across his face. Jody sighed. What she would give to be at the gym right now.

The only reason she was even downstairs was so that Mike and May-Li wouldn't nag her about her spending the entire day in her room, as they had when she'd pulled the same stunt after Tyler had left. In any case, it was about an hour until dinnertime, so she sucked it up and went to the kitchen, sitting down at the head of the empty table. She didn't really want to be at the table, didn't really want to stare at eleven jolly, carefree faces for the duration of yet another meal, but sitting at the breakfast bar would only draw unwanted attention; since Tyler had left, there were enough chairs around the table for all of the residents to take their meals together in one sitting. As such, the breakfast bar had really become what its name suggested.

Alas, her peaceful solitude didn't last because Alex entered the kitchen not long after she had. She'd forgotten he was cooking tonight. To his credit, he largely ignored her as he went about getting his ingredients out, and she ignored him right back. She didn't know why he was making such a big deal of what she'd said earlier. All she'd done was look out for  _his_  girlfriend. Was that a crime now?

The trouble had started sometime after lunch when some of the kids had gathered around Alex and Charlie in the kitchen and started to say stupidly optimistic things about mums and daughters; Melanie, Charlie's mother, had got out of prison a couple of weeks ago and Charlie had been hanging out with her practically every single day since. Charlie had also inherited her granddad's house, the house she and Melanie had both grown up in, though it was being held in trust until she turned eighteen. That was all well and good but having experienced heartbreak at the hands of an ex-con mother herself, Jody had simply done what she saw as her duty both as a friend and a decent person by warning Charlie not to get too attached to Melanie.

However, her well-intended words had backfired. Not only had Charlie stormed off in a strop, but Alex had had a go at Jody straight after, accusing her of wanting Charlie and Melanie to fail because she and Denise had. He was lucky she hadn't decked him in the face like she had Amabel and Ryan before him; the only reason she hadn't was that she'd had to rush upstairs to hide how much his words had stung. The Luke situation had made her soft, much softer than she cared to admit.

Looking at him now, she found that the emotional wound was still smarting. This wouldn't do. She was already bogged down by things she couldn't say to Luke and Millie; if she kept her upset at Alex pent up as well, she would implode.

"What you said to me after lunch was bang out of order, you know?" she said, staring right at him. He looked up from the chopping board he'd just set down on the breakfast bar, frowning. "Just because I'm never going to go back to my family, it doesn't mean I don't want anyone else to. I'm not like that. If I was, don't you think I would've gone nuclear when Tyler left to live with his mum?"

Alex shrugged. "You were pretty upset."

"Yeah,  _upset,_ like you were when Kazima left." He blinked. The thought had clearly never occurred to him. "Not jealous, or something stupid like that," she continued, holding his gaze. She considered telling him that she had actually been the one to convince Tyler to go after he'd told her he didn't want to but decided against it. Selfless deeds ceased being selfless once one bragged about them or used them to make a point. "Look, I would never try to get in the way of someone else's happiness, especially another care kid's. I know I'm going to be stuck here until I'm too old for the system so seeing other care kids go back to their families or finding new ones actually makes me happy."

He nodded, momentarily looking down. "I'm sorry. I guess I just thought you were trying to mess things up for her because you went through the exact same thing. You know, with the mum who went prison and that."

"Well, that's why I spoke up in the first place. Sometimes, ex-cons use people close to them for money. It's happened to me, so I know what it's like. I don't know if you already know this—maybe one of the others told you—but after his first stint in prison, my brother made me steal from everyone else in the house, even Mike and May-Li, so he could sell their stuff off to make money."

"Yeah, I think someone mentioned it. I was exactly like your brother at one point. I mean, I'm not an ex-con but I used Kazima when I needed money as well. I only realised what a shitty move it was after I got help. But Melanie wouldn't do that, would she? Use Charlie, I mean?"

She released a deep breath. It was difficult to say. She hadn't been able to see through her own family members until it had been too late so how could she with someone she barely knew? "I don't know. She could turn out to be decent like your mum, but, let's face it, she'll probably turn out to be more like mine. All I'm saying is that Charlie should be careful."

"How do you mean?"

"I don't know. Look out for dodgy behaviour, I guess? You can help; you're good at that stuff." He smirked, not even bothering to deny it. "You went to visit Melanie with her last time, right?"

He suddenly straightened up, his smirk slipping. "Err, yeah," he answered, placing an onion on the chopping board. "We're going to see her again tomorrow... At her flat."

"Well, there you go," she said, raising a brow. Why was he acting kind of jittery all of sudden? Realising that he was about to cut the onions, she immediately leapt up from her seat. Her eyes were horribly sensitive to those things, even when someone else was doing the cutting. Back to the lounge, it was... unlike Charlie, who seemed to have been holed up in her room since she'd stormed off. "Charlie is okay, isn't she? I didn't see her downstairs."

Alex smiled. "Yeah, she's fine. She was a little upset, you know, after what you said, but I told her that you were just trying to protect her. And you were. I'll check on her again, after I get this stuff cooking."

Jody nodded, smiling bittersweetly as she left the kitchen. Despite her insistence that she didn't get jealous of her fellow care kids, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy as she thought about how Alex always looked out for Charlie. It was times like these she wished more than ever that Tyler still lived at Ashdene Ridge; without him, she'd find herself sinking back into a bout of agonising over Luke in no time.

.:. QK .:.

It seemed like forever before Jody was allowed to return to the gym but once she stepped through those blue double doors, she sighed in relief. Being trapped at home for an entire week had been a complete and utter nightmare. Everyone at the house had been too busy dealing with the fall-out of Melanie betraying Charlie, Sasha had been a total pain to talk to because she was so distracted by her relationship issues, and Tyler hadn't been able to visit very often at all, having been hard-pressed to write a report about 'so fake' crop-circles for his workplace, meaning all Jody had been able to do in her free time was worry about Luke and, more recently, his child.

Millie had already made Luke's life a living hell and would continue to do so indefinitely but what kind of person would she raise their child to be? The toxic environment in their home could only yield another unhappy criminal like Kingsley, and if there was one thing the world could do without, it was people like her eldest brother. As someone who knew first hand what it was like to be raised by a woman like Millie, she didn't want such a life for her niece or nephew but was powerless to help. What could she do when the child would have a mother who'd likely brainwash him/her against her by the time he/she could talk and a father who'd do nothing to stop it? The poor kid was in for a tough ride.

Even if she did somehow find herself in a position to help, what exactly would she be able to do? She couldn't even get past her own bad blood, the Jackson blood, the same blood that ran through the child's veins. As of now, she was just as bad an influence as Kingsley and Denise, and her nephew or niece was better off without her in his/her life. The proof was standing right in front of her in the form of Amabel, whose nose was still bruised purple-black.

A healthy dose of shame welled up in her as she realised she had to have punched Amabel extremely hard because even Ryan's nose hadn't looked quite so bad a week after her mother's funeral. Quickly averting her gaze, she approached the lockers, thankful that no one else was in the room to either make snide comments or snigger in the background. The pair of them took out their equipment and locked their bags away in tense silence, not even looking at one another.

Wondering if she was going to have to make do with Brandon as a part-time sparring partner, Jody turned away first and walked off. She had the door to the corridor halfway open when she heard her name being called. Not her surname either, but her first. She released the door and spun around, just to make sure it was Amabel who'd called her. Indeed, it was.

"Come here for a second?"

Jody couldn't help but be wary. "Why?"

Amabel rolled her eyes, lowering herself onto the nearest bench. "If I wanted to punch you, I would've done it already. And I would've done it back then."

"You did try," Jody said, recalling how Bernadette had held Amabel back from retaliating. Nevertheless, she joined her maybe-sister on the bench.

"Listen," Amabel began, putting her hands together, "I shouldn't have said what I did about your family. It's not your fault you're in care, so it doesn't really make sense as an insult."

"Is this supposed to be an apology?"

"It's the closest you're going to get to one."

A smile tugged at Jody's lips. Now  _that_  sounded like Amabel. "For what it's worth, I shouldn't have spoken to you the way I did either. I'm talking about how I spoke before we got into the ring; I still think Amy for Amabel is weird."

"It's what my brother calls me. He came up with it when he was three, so..."

"Oh." Well, it was a nicer name than 'Monkey'. "How old is he now?"

Amabel glanced at her sideways. "Ten." The same age as Benji... "Look, I didn't sit down here for a chat. If we're d—"

"We're not," Jody interjected quickly. "I haven't finished. As I was saying, I shouldn't have been rude to you. I was angry at someone, someone I couldn't talk to at the time, and I guess I just ended up taking it out on you. You were right, though. My dad doesn't know I exist, and I know nothing about family."

"You're not missing out on much. Trust me. Family's overrated."

She thought back to what Tyler had said a few weeks ago, about how important family was. At the time, she'd thought she hadn't understood it because she was still in care (and likely would be until she was eighteen) but now she wasn't so sure. After all, Amabel had presumably been in a family situation her whole life but rarely had anything good to say about the people who'd raised her. Either family wasn't all that great, as Jody had always thought, or Amabel was an ungrateful daughter.

"As someone who's in care an' all, I can't really agree with you. Anyway, didn't you say your mum and your brother were all you needed in life?"

Amabel looked down at her lap. "I did, but it's more complicated than that. Family always is. I'm just saying that having parents, especially a dad, isn't all it's cracked up to be."

"Why not?"

Jody half expected Amabel to tell her to shut up and mind her own business, but she didn't. Instead, she pursed her lips, as if mulling things over, but just when she appeared to be ready to answer, the changing room door swung open. Then, just like that, Amabel clammed up again and abruptly rose to her feet, and Jody inwardly lamented at her loss of progress.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING—allusions to sexual intercourse are made in this chapter.**

Following a good work-out, Jody yawned and rubbed her eyes, feeling unusually tired. Chalking it down to stress over her imminent exams which were now only two months away, she stretched her arms, only to flinch at how stiff they felt. The clock on the wall read 18:10, nearly a full hour before the time she usually headed home, but maybe it was time to call it a day; the homework she'd been too moody to do over the weekend had piled up, and she could practically hear it beckoning her from its place on her bedroom desk. She yawned again, casting a glance around the room to see that Amabel still wasn't back from the toilets. Amabel had been gone for at least twenty minutes which was odd because she, like Jody, wasn't the type to spend ages in the ladies'; they left that to the idiots who only came to the gym to find new boyfriends and therefore had to constantly prune themselves in front of the huge mirrors.

Spotting Brandon near the door, Jody walked up to him and asked if he knew where Amabel was. He briefly looked up from his phone, replying in the negative, and she sighed, before heading for the toilets. Of course, she could've just told Brandon to tell Amabel that she'd gone home for the evening but, personally, she found that to be a little rude. It was somewhat acceptable between acquaintances but she liked to think that she and Amabel had moved past that. They weren't quite friends yet but their sort of heart-to-heart last Thursday had definitely been a step in the right direction to her ultimate goal.

To Jody's relief, none of the timewasters were hanging around in front of the mirrors today, meaning she wouldn't have to listen to whispers and giggles about how she and Amabel had kissed and made up following the punch. A couple of cubicles, however, were occupied, the closest to Jody being the one in the middle. Unable to discern which one her partner was in, she opened her mouth, about to call for said girl, when a moan came from the cubicle on the far end. A loud moan.

"Amabel?" she called quietly, dismissing the moan as a result of painful period cramps. She'd had her fair share of those.

No one answered, at least not in the form of words. This time she heard a low grunt, too low to be a female's. Her eyes widened. What was a guy doing in the women's toilets? Was he a pervert? The decidedly female moans returned, intermingling with the grunts, and Jody's hand flew to her mouth as the reality dawned on her, or rather, smacked her in the face.

She willed her legs to move, knowing that she ought to just leave and forget what she'd heard, but found herself rooted to her spot. Somehow, the... noises... made her feel all weird inside, and not in a bad way. The dirty part of her mind had wondered once or twice where on Earth Charlie and Alex used to go to get it on prior to the former inheriting a house, and the answer seemed to be right in front of her. However, for their sakes, she hoped they hadn't sunk quite so low; little children used public toilets too.

The sobering thought snapped Jody out of her stupor, and she instantly felt ashamed for stopping to listen in on such activity while on a search for Amabel. Whoever was in the middle cubicle was apparently listening in as well because she hadn't heard so much as a rattle from them. Was it Amabel? If so, she knew she wouldn't be able to look at her the same way again.

Realising that the couple, for lack of a better word, had gone silent, Jody quickly swung the main door to the toilet open before running into a random cubicle and slamming that door behind her. Sure enough, she heard the door to her far right open followed by footfalls and finally the main door opening. Once she heard the soft click of the door close, she immediately flung herself out of the dirty cubicle, heading straight for the basin.

"Dirty arses didn't even wash their hands."

Jody's head snapped up, her gaze falling upon the mirror where she saw Amabel emerging from the cubicle in the middle. Remembering what they'd just overheard together, she blushed and looked back down at her wet hands under the running tap, trying to find her voice.

"Yeah, well, I guess they didn't want to risk being seen..."

Amabel joined her, standing in front of the basin to her right. It was then that she glanced back up at the mirror and noticed Amabel's bloodshot eyes. She knew that look all too well. She'd seen it in the bathroom mirror at home the day she'd met Millie, and then more recently right after Luke had sent her an ultrasound photo of his baby.

"You know all about that, do you?" Amabel asked. Jody blinked, tearing her eyes away from Amabel's reflection. What had they been talking about again? "Wait. Did you and Dalton do it here too?"

"No!" Jody exclaimed, everything coming back to her. She turned the tap off, shooting Amabel a dark look. "We were too young!"

"What about you and what's his name..." Amabel's eyes lit up, despite their redness. "Tyler?"

Jody pressed her lips together in irritation, nearly retorting that she and Tyler didn't need public toilets because they had his room on the days both his mum and stepdad were working. Her eyes widened in horror. Why was she even thinking about that? Why did she have all of that  _availability_  worked out?

"We're both still fifteen," she managed to say before scurrying over to the hand dryers. She cringed. Still fifteen? Why had she said that as if it was the only thing standing in her and Tyler's way?! She needed the spotlight off herself, ASAP. She turned back to Amabel who was still washing her hands. "Anyway, the whole reason I came in here in the first place was to tell you I'm going home early."

Amabel looked up from her hands at Jody, appearing to be strangely subdued. "Okay."

As Amabel averted her gaze, Jody furrowed her eyebrows. 'Okay'? Just like that? She shook her head and muttered a 'bye' before exiting the toilets.

The next fifteen minutes went by waiting in the corridor for May-Li to pick her up but by the time May-Li arrived, Amabel still hadn't come out of the ladies'. Jody got into May-Li's car, unable to shake off the image of Amabel's bloodshot eyes seared into her mind.

.:. QK .:.

The next day, Jody laid in wait for Amabel to come into the gym and when she did, she grabbed her by the hand and tugged her over to the corner. Amabel shrugged her off with a scowl, asking her what the hell she thought she was doing. Jody didn't quite know herself but, for once, Luke and his problems hadn't been on her mind after completing her homework last night; Amabel's had, namely her weird behaviour as of late. That in itself was enough to warrant questioning; Amabel had to be going through something serious to displace Luke from Jody's thoughts.

"What were you doing in the toilets yesterday, listening in on those people?"

Amabel looked irritated. "You were listening too!"

Jumping, Jody frantically looked around to make sure no one had heard that. She didn't know exactly who had been in that cubicle together; it was quite possible that one or both culprits were in the gym right now, acting innocent. Either that or they were in the toilets once more, going for round two... or twenty. She shivered at the thought.

"Yeah," she began, turning back to Amabel and fixing her with a reproachful look, "but I already told you why I was there. Why were you? You were there for ages before I went in and you were still there when I left for home... It's not like you."

"And how would you know what's like me? You've only known me for three months, maybe four."

"Three months is enough to know that it's not like you to cry. I've never seen you cry before, not even when you found out you didn't get into the team."

"Shut up!" Amabel hissed, her eyes darting wildly around the room. "This is not the time or place! And I wasn't crying, okay?!"

Jody chose not to call Amabel out on her blatant lie. "Well, when and where, then, because I'm not going to stop asking until you tell me. Or do you want me to guess, instead? Because I've got a really good idea that explains everything!"

"Look, Gray, it's really none of your business!"

"Jody," she corrected, crossing her arms. Honestly, they should've been on a first-name basis by now. "Jody, okay? You called me that last Thursday, so I know that you can do it if you want to."

"Well, _Jody_ , I don't want to or have to tell you anything. Just forget about yesterday, and we can both move on."

"Okay, so you do want me to guess? Fine. My guess is that you saw the guy you like go into the toilets with another girl, followed them, and then got upset when you realised what they were doing in there."

Amabel peered up at the ceiling and pressed her lips together, her eyes watering up, before bolting out of the gym. Jody watched on in shock; her so-called guess had been more jest than a serious, educated assumption. In fact, she'd started to think that Amabel was either asexual or a closeted lesbian. She ignored the stares from the others, including Brandon, and swept up the gear Amabel had discarded on the floor, wondering which one of these guys had struck Amabel's fancy and left her brokenhearted. For all she knew, it was one of Brandon's mates.

After locking Amabel's things away in an extra locker for safekeeping, along with her own, she searched the entire building for her sparring partner. Luckily, she didn't have to look very far, because she found her out back where the slackers usually slipped off to for a cigarette. Not that she'd ever been involved in that; she'd just happened to hear her fellow gymgoers discuss it from time to time.

"Amabel?" Jody called as she walked up to said girl from behind. "Are you okay?"

Amabel only burst into more tears, clamping her hands over her face. Jody swallowed deeply, feeling like a right idiot; if Amabel was okay, she wouldn't have cried in the first place.

"Look," she started, gingerly sitting next to Amabel on the brick ledge she was perched on, "I get it. I felt like shit when the guy I liked started going out with someone else. If I'd heard him getting it on with her or some other girl, I probably would've cried too."

Croaked laughter came from Amabel. "Oh, Jody," she said, throwing her head back and wiping at her eyes, "you're so stupid..." Jody stared back at her, flabbergasted, her face heating up. She'd just poured her heart out and this what she got in return? "Do I really look like the type of girl who'd cry because I heard a guy fuck a girl?"

"If you liked him, then yeah... Isn't that what happened?"

"No, that's not what fucking happened!"

Jody wrinkled her nose at Amabel's pottymouth. It was as bad as Kingsley's. "Alright, you don't need to swear in every sentence."

"I won't, then," Amabel said, actually cracking a wry smile. "But I think it's offensive that you think I cried because I like some wanker who gets it on in a public toilet. That's effin disgusting. Who knows how many STIs he has? Besides, I am so not interested in men."

Now that made sense. "So... you were upset because you like the girl, then?"

"Ugh, no! I'm not into girls! I'm straight!"

What? "But you just said..."

Sighing, Amabel shook her head. "I'm attracted to guys. If I ever had sex, it would be with a guy. I'm just not interested in a relationship with one."

"Why?"

"I hate that question. Everyone's always asking me that! My friends, my cousins, everyone! You know, they all think I'm a lesbian too, just because I don't talk about guys twenty-four-seven like they all do!"

"Okay, never mind," Jody said, realising that they'd gone off-topic. If she took any longer, Amabel would likely clam up and shut her out again. "Now tell me, why were you crying? You can lie all you want about yesterday but you just cried in front of me."

"Remember when I told you that it's not the right time or place?" Amabel asked, looking off into the distance. Jody raised her eyebrow but nodded. "It still isn't."

Jody couldn't help but let out a frustrated noise. Amabel had to be the toughest nut she'd ever tried to crack. Admittedly, it'd taken her two whole years to have an honest talk with Sasha before they became friends but that was different; she hadn't been trying. Amabel, though? She'd been trying since day one (of learning her last name) and still hadn't got anywhere!

"Relax," Amabel continued. "I'm not just saying this to shut you up. I mean it. I'll text you the name of a place later and we'll meet there. I just don't want to waste any more time today." She looked at her watch, immediately standing up. "I've been sitting out here for fifteen minutes already!"

The way she said it made it sound more like fifteen hours, but Jody got her point; Amabel wanted to make it into the team next year and so did she.

"Fine. Let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **After watching the other promo for 7B, I think I get why the writers have gone and wedged Piper in between Jyler; in season 6, we saw Jody realise she preferred Tyler to other guys but because we didn't see the reverse, the writers have Tyler take Piper to prom and then say 'she's not you' to Jody about Piper. This plot in itself isn't bad but it makes Tyler comes off as sleazy because it happens after he promises Jody that he won't get another girlfriend. I know that taking a girl to prom doesn't mean she's your girlfriend but 'she's not you' is something you say after you seriously consider 'she' as a partner. It just makes one wonder how many more times Tyler will waver over the years. I mean, this sounds like the beginnings of a weak husband: the type that has numerous affairs but comes back home to his wife after each one, realising he'd rather be with her than any of them.**
> 
> **Overall, Tyler's behaviour in the promo seems so OOC to me; why would he ever purposely hurt Jody? That's just not something he does. I'd rather that Jyler break off their understanding to not date others than Tyler do this while that understanding is still in effect. That's the only way this upcoming storyline will ever make sense to me.**


	47. Chapter 47

" _You're coming by later, aren't you?_ " Tyler asked, his voice barely audible over the general hubbub of the radio station. " _Mum's working so it's just going to be me, you and Kamal. You know what that means!_ "

"Free burgers?" Jody quipped, her gaze sweeping around the busy cafe.

He chuckled. " _No! Well, yeah, but it also means we get to mess around!_ "

She raised an eyebrow, wondering if he understood the implications behind what he'd just said; messing around just didn't mean what it used to anymore. When they were kids, it had meant doing whatever would piss Mike and May-Li (or Gina, in the earlier days) off, namely slacking off homework and stealing junk food from the cupboards, but now... now it meant what she'd heard in the gymnasium toilets a few days ago, or at least something leading up to it.

Sighing, she sat down at an empty table. "I don't know... I don't think we'll have the time; I've still got to study some more. I'm falling behind in maths again."

" _You need a break, Jodes. You study literally all day every single Saturday. What are you doing right now?_ "

"I'm on a break, actually," she answered, rapping her knuckles on the table. "I'm out meeting someone."

" _Should I be worried?_ "

She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, suppressing a giggle. "No, 'course not! I'm m—"

" _Hey, Tyler!_ " came a voice that tugged at Jody's memory. " _Mum's asking for you. Come on!_ "

The giggles instantly died in her chest, and she dropped her hand. What was Piper doing at the radio station? She didn't work there; according to Tyler himself, her presence at the station the day he'd interviewed Lethal G had been a one-off.

" _Oh, Jody, I've got to go!_ " he said, his tone urgent. " _I'll talk to you later!_ "

He hung up before she could reply, and as she put her mobile away, she tried to shake off the jealous churning in her gut. She trusted Tyler with her life, a choice that'd served her well in the past, but she did not trust Piper; she'd seen the way Piper had looked at Tyler back when they'd visited Ashdene Ridge together which was ridiculous considering that she'd had the gall to call him 'lame' mere hours before hanging all over him. Who did that?

"Didn't expect you to actually turn up."

Jody snapped out of her thoughts, craning her neck to see Amabel who'd come up from behind her. "Yeah, well, I can be pretty stubborn when it comes to getting what I want. I was actually starting to think that  _you_  weren't going to show."

"I got here before you; I was sitting out back," Amabel said, tipping her head towards the outdoor seating area. "I was going to come up and say hi but then I saw that you were on your phone. It looked important."

"It wasn't. It was just a chat with a mate. Anyway, sit down because I am not going to sit out back in the cold."

Shrugging out of her too-thick-for-March jacket and swinging it around the back of the chair across from Jody, Amabel did as she was told. The sight of her in everyday clothes was a queer one—she always came to and left the gym in some form of sportswear—but somehow, she looked happier and healthier than she ever had at the gym. It was subtle, perhaps somewhere around the eyes, but present nonetheless.

"Do you want something to eat or drink?" Amabel asked, glancing at the specials board.

"No, I just had lunch," Jody replied. "Besides, I didn't come here to eat or drink. You know why I'm here."

Amabel shook her head. "I don't get you. Why do you wanna know so bad? It's not like you've never seen people cry before; you live in a care home."

"It's not just the crying, Amabel. It's everything about you: everything you say, everything you do, how angry you always are..."

"You're not exactly little Miss Sunshine yourself."

Jody laughed under her breath as Amabel pointed to her now fully-healed nose. "No, but I'm not always in a strop either. How many times have you seen me lose my cool?" Amabel shrugged. "Once or twice, right? You, though... you're something else. I don't think I've ever even seen you smile properly."

Amabel squirmed in her seat, her eyes downcast. "Yeah, well, it's kind of hard to be all jolly when you know that all you've got to go back to is a warzone."

Kazima's background suddenly came to mind. "Warzone...?"

"Yeah. What else do you call a house where there's always screaming and shouting and all of that shit?"

Oh.  _That_  sort of warzone. "Well, my care home's one of those. It doesn't take long for us to fall out, especially the young'uns."

"No offence," Amabel began, her voice harsh, "but it's not the same thing. I mean, yeah, all of you kids fight—that's normal in big homes—but the adults don't, do they?" Jody wanted to say yes but she could hardly call Mike and May-Li's minor disagreements fights. They certainly didn't scream or shout to get their points across, at least not in front of her and the others; who knew what happened when they were all at school or college? Amabel released a short breath through her nose, smiling sadly. "I thought not."

"So your parents fight all the time? Are they getting a divorce? Is that why you were crying?"

"I wish! But no, they'd never divorce; they see it as a weakness. The whole Gray family does."

For the first time since meeting Amabel, it seemed Jody had real reason to believe that they weren't sisters after all. Too many things didn't add up. How could a man regard divorce as a sign of weakness after living in sin with a woman for at least a decade and having two or three bastards with her and then cheating on her with someone else? Even if Gray's behaviour could be explained away as him having been a rule-breaker in his youth before settling down with Amabel's mother after leaving Jody's, what about the fact that Jody had never heard of the rest of this 'whole Gray family'? Growing up, she'd always believed that her father had been an only child and that his parents had died well before her birth because neither of her brothers or her mother had ever mentioned any extended family, not even to complain or bitch about them. When she thought about the number of times that Denise and Kingsley had both badmouthed Gray over the years, it seemed impossible that they wouldn't do the same for Gray's relatives, be it his parents, siblings, or cousins.

"Wow," she uttered, unable to think of anything else to say. "But do you really want your parents to divorce? Isn't that a little harsh?"

She couldn't help but think that Amabel was being ungrateful. Didn't all couples fight occasionally? Was that a good enough reason to want one's whole family to be ripped apart?

"No, it isn't," Amabel said, clenching her fists. "I mean, I could get over it if they actually liked each other but they don't. In fact, they hate each other! He's always yelling at her, putting her down, blaming her for everything, and then she's always coming to me and complaining about it but ignores me when I tell her to leave him. She says she's together for us kids... yeah right. They're just two completely different people who should've never been put together."

"Put together?"

"Yeah, by God."

"Oh," Jody let out, feeling stupid. For a second there, she'd thought that Amabel had been referring to a forced marriage like those of Aliyah's many aunts. "Well, what can you do? You've just got to wait until you can move out. You've only got three more years left after this one and then you'll be off to uni."

"It's not as simple as that. They have this whole life planned out for me, this life I'm supposed to live. Because they hate each other so much, they need me and my brother to make them happy. They need us to get good grades, be great hosts to their guests, do well in extracurriculars, get into top unis, have successful careers"—Amabel's breath hitched, and she averted her gaze—"and then get married and give them grandchildren."

Jody frowned. "That's way too much to expect! It sounds like they want you to be perfect."

Mike and May-Li never told her or any of the other residents what to do with their lives. They suggested things, yes, and pointed out what each kid was good at, but they never expected anything other than the completion of homework and chores. Jody didn't even hold any of that against her carers anymore, especially the latter; after seeing the way Luke and Millie ran things, she was actually grateful to Mike and May-Li for teaching her the importance of cleanliness and order. Amabel's parents, though, were out of this world. No wonder the poor girl had cried the other day.

"Yeah, well, me and my brother are the only products of their marriage that they can be proud of. It kind of makes sense."

"It's still not fair! You don't even want a relationship, so how can they expect you to get married one day?!"

"The same way they expect me to become a boxing champ. What I want doesn't matter."

Amabel's admission should've come as a shock but, somehow, it didn't. If anything, it made a lot of things fall into place. For one, Amabel's lack of emotion upon learning that she'd failed the trials finally made sense; how could she be genuinely upset when she'd never wanted to succeed in the first place? Then there were the seemingly pointless and unfair lies to her mother, lies that were probably designed to keep the woman 'happy' as her daughter called it. Most importantly, however, was the fact that Amabel appeared to be so much more content and relaxed away from the gym—away from the pressure

"So you never liked boxing?" Jody asked. Somehow, she didn't want to accept that her connection to Amabel had been  _doubly_  fake.

"Oh, I used to," Amabel answered, bringing her gaze back to meet Jody's, "back when it was still a hobby. Something that was just mine, separate from them. But then, of course, they ruined it when I had to tell them where I kept going after school. They didn't want me wasting time I could use studying or doing something else worthwhile so they—"

"Made you try out for the team."

"Yeah. Only, I wasn't old enough for the junior division last year so they pinned all their hopes on me to get in this year."

"Amabel, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Fuck their expectations. Don't get into a relationship or get married if you don't want to. Your brother can give them grandchildren. And if they want to see a boxing champ in the family so bad, they can go and try out."

"Are you serious right now? They're both too old, especially him. He's in his fifties."

Fifties... Gray was likely in his fifties... Jody shook her head. "That's not the point, Amabel! You need to stand up for yourself; tell them you don't want to play it their way anymore."

"I can't," Amabel replied, her eyes becoming glassy. "If they find out I didn't make the team, they'll never speak to me again."

Jody felt her temper rise. "So what?! You don't need people like that in your life!"

"Oh yeah?! And what do you expect me to do if they stop talking to me? I'm not gonna put myself in care if that's what you're thinking!" Jody shrunk back in her chair, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks; Amabel had caught her out big time. "Look, Jody, you probably won't get why but I want to stay with them as long as I can. I want to be able to come back after uni as well."

"But what about all of that stuff you said? About how family wasn't that great, especially having a dad?"

All of a sudden, Amabel tensed up, a momentary flash of panic crossing her features. Jody blinked in surprise at Amabel's sudden change in demeanour; she'd never known Amabel to be scared of anyone or anything.

Amabel swallowed deeply. "Forget about that. I was just angry. Don't you say all sorts of crap when you're angry?" She twisted in her seat, grabbing her jacket. "I've got to get going. I'm supposed to be hitting the gym later."

Still astonished by Amabel's reaction to the mention of her family, Jody simply nodded and muttered a 'bye'. She watched on as Amabel left the cafe, noting that the girl seemed to be in a hurry to get away as if she was fleeing a crime scene. What was the crime, though? Being late to get back home? Or opening up to Jody?


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING—there are implications of sexual abuse in this chapter.**

_Why would a girl be scared of her family?_

The search results came up with countless links to irrelevant webpages ranging from articles about women being afraid to love to those about men being scared of women who wanted children, but nothing where the word 'girl' actually meant 'girl'. Jody sighed. She'd come straight home from the cafe she'd met Amabel in and had quickly snatched the household laptop when no one had been looking, but after a string of at least twenty searches, she still had no answers. Considering her failures to find Gray and Benji online, this was pretty par for the course, but she didn't want to give up just yet.

Since the reemergence of her bad side, or perhaps true face, she'd given up believing that she helped others out of sympathy or the goodness of her heart. This time was no different. The scared expression on Amabel's face had raked up memories of a time when she'd been that fearful of her own family, and she needed to understand what Amabel was so afraid of to rebury those memories. With that in mind, she tried searching again, but worded her query differently:  _what makes a girl afraid of her family?_  This search yielded better results but the search engine seemed to take 'girl' to mean small child.

She considered adding 'teenage' into the search, in front of 'girl', but paused as she suddenly remembered that Amabel seemed to have frozen up at the mention of her father, specifically. Well, Jody couldn't be sure that that was exactly what'd happened—she wasn't known for her memory—but the fact remained that Amabel's father had always been the family member she'd seemed most distant to. Maybe it was just him she feared, rather than the entire family. It certainly made sense; Amabel had said she only needed her mother and brother in life, not her father. Jody flexed her fingers, formulating a new query.

_Why would a girl be afraid of her father?_

At first, it appeared as though the results were just as unhelpful as the previous ones but, this time around, something in her compelled her to scroll down. So she did. She even went to the next page, too, and felt the instantaneous urge to vomit when she read the title of the third link down the page.

_My Dad the paedophile._

Selfishly, she became concerned about what this meant for her rather than Amabel; if this was true, and Amabel's father was her father too, then all of her blood was officially filthy. She'd never thought that Gray was a saint anyway, given the fact that he'd walked out on the Jacksons for another woman, but she'd been happy knowing so little about him because it had meant keeping her reclaimed surname relatively untainted. Now, though? Now she'd gone and backed herself into a corner. Where before she was just the daughter of two deadbeats, she was now potentially the daughter of a deadbeat  _and_  a sexual abuser of the worst kind—a monster who preyed on its own offspring.

Jody backed away from the laptop and leant back in her chair, wondering if she was hastily jumping to conclusions. There were a million other reasons that could explain Amabel's fear of her father such as the kind of neglect and physical abuse Denise and Kingsley had put Jody through. However, Amabel wasn't a nine-year-old; her father could hardly lock her up in her room or find himself in a position to force her head under bathwater. It was still possible that he beat her, yes, but Jody had never seen signs of that sort of abuse on her. In fact, the last bruise Amabel had sported had been given to her by Jody herself...

Sexual abuse was harder to spot, for obvious reasons. Only someone who walked in on a victim naked would be able to tell something was off and while Jody had never caught Amabel in such a state, she had walked in on her crying in the toilets just this Monday. She didn't want to think about it, didn't want to nauseate herself, but she couldn't deny the likelihood of Amabel bursting into tears at the sight of the damage that had been done to her at the hands of her own father. The more she thought about it, the more things started to add up, especially Amabel's total lack of desire to get into a relationship; she'd read somewhere once that childhood sexual abuse victims, particularly women, had a hard time dealing with relationships due to trauma and trust issues. Of course, Amabel had said that she was uninterested in a relationship rather than scared of starting one but if Jody's suspicions were true, then that statement had simply been a ruse to conceal the truth.

The  _truth_. Jody nearly quaked in her boots just thinking about it, but tomorrow, she would have to uncover that truth, if only to set her own mind at rest.

.:. QK .:.

The next day, Jody steeled herself for the inevitable relief or heartbreak she was going to experience after confronting Amabel as she stood outside the double doors to the main gym room and spied said girl through the glass windows. The thought of finding out if her maybe-father was a molester or rapist made her sick to the stomach but she willed herself to buckle down and get on with it. She was anything but a coward.

Resolute in her mission, she threw open the double doors and marched into the room, her line of sight fixed solely upon her target. Amabel gave her the side-eye as she approached, clearly amused.

"Why have you got that look on your face?" she asked, stretching her arms as she always did during her warm-up. Looking at her now, no one would be able to tell that her heart wasn't one hundred per cent set on getting into the junior team next year. "You look like you need to take a dump."

Jody tried not to react, hoping that Amabel was joking; she wouldn't be able to take herself seriously anymore if not. She'd have to check her game-face out as soon as she got back home. "I need to talk to you."

Frowning, Amabel let her arms fall and straightened her back, standing up to her full height. She was a couple of inches taller than Jody. "We already did the talking thing yesterday. Today's for training."

"Training for something you don't even want to do?"

"I wouldn't be training if I didn't want to make the team."

"But it's not really what  _you_  want, is it?" Jody asked, crossing her arms. "Be honest."

"Let's see, what I want is to please my parents, and the way to do that is to make the team and represent our region. So yeah, it  _is_  what I want, just like it's what you want."

"Don't compare yourself to me. I want to make the team for myself, not anyone else. I don't have an abusive parent pressuring me into it."

Both of Amabel's hands curled up into fists, and she blinked once, twice, and a third time, before managing to ask Jody what she was on about sans swearing.

"I'm talking about your dad. He's abusive, right?"

"How is that any of your business?!"

"You can tell me the truth," Jody insisted, glad that the gym was relatively quiet. "I'm not going to tell anyone; I'm not a snitch."

"I don't care what you are!" Amabel hissed. "My family is none of your business. I only spoke to you yesterday so that you would drop the whole crying thing and move on. I wasn't opening up to you or some other soft shit like that!"

"I don't believe that. If it was like that, you would've just told me why you were crying right off the bat and left straight after. But you didn't. You started telling me all about your parents' marriage and how the pressure they put on you stresses you out. I didn't ask you to tell me any of that; you told me all on your own."

"You didn't ask me? Really? You were sticking your bloody nose in like you always do, so I had to tell you!" Amabel released a laugh through her nose, shaking her head. "This is exactly why my dad told me to never talk to outsiders about family matters. I can't believe I was so stupid to go against him."

Somehow, Amabel's words pushed Jody's patience to the limit. She'd been reluctant at first to spell out the type of abuse she was referring to, either out of embarrassment or fear, but she just couldn't stand the suspense anymore. Wasn't it better to know the truth than to wonder?

"He's raping you, isn't he?"

Amabel's face paled, her mouth dropping wide open. She looked ashen, almost ill, and remained silent for so long that Jody worried she'd gone into shock. Maybe being so straightforward hadn't been the best idea, after all; Jody's question could've raked up some awful memories.

"My mum was right when she said you care kids are fucked up," Amabel finally spoke, her voice hoarse. "Maybe the girl who lives down the hall from you was raped by her nonce dad, but that is not me, okay? If he's raping anyone, it's my mum."

Jody's blood boiled but she forced herself to keep her cool. As far as she knew, none of her housemates, past or present, had been subjected to sexual abuse, whether by their fathers or someone else, but Amabel wasn't all wrong; they were all 'fucked-up' in their own ways, from her with her destructive anger to Ryan and his insatiable need for revenge. That was just who they were. It didn't make sense to get angry over a truthful, accurate statement. Still, she was horribly vexed, and she needed to take it out on someone.

"What's your dad's name?" she asked. She'd let this slow, subtle, trust-gaining nonsense go on long enough. She should've just asked straight out the very day Amabel had been called 'Gray' in front of her.

Amabel scoffed. "You really think I'm gonna tell you after what you just said?"

"Please, I need to know."

"So you can go and tell your care worker about your whack theories and then send the social knocking 'round my door? NO."

Fixing Amabel with a stare, Jody tipped her head to the side. "Do you really think I won't be able to find him on my own? I know your name and it's not exactly common. Not here, anyway. One word to my carers, and..."

"Don't you dare!"

"I won't if you tell me!"

"No, you don't understand!" Amabel wailed, panic setting into her tone. "I  _need_  them to be a part of my life! I mean, just look at me; I'm rude, unlikeable, socially awkward... where on Earth would I go if I didn't have my parents around? Hmm? After seeing how my father treats my mother, I never want to get into a relationship, so they're really all I'm ever going to have! Who would want me anyway? I'm a ball of rage!"

"You know where you could go, Amabel."

"I'm sorry, Jody, but I'd never be able to give up my middle-class life to live like you. I know what it's like for you care kids; I couldn't live a single day without my dad's money."

"Are you serious?" Jody asked, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. She was offering Amabel a life away from abuse, her mother's, if not her own, and yet Amabel could only think of money. "It won't matter as much once you're old enough to work. You've only got to wait a year."

The look on Amabel's face made it all too clear that she was determined to stay where she was.

Jody sighed, her desire to find out if Amabel was her sister rapidly waning; she didn't need yet another spineless sibling to worry about. "Fine. I won't tell anyone. I'll never even mention your family again."

Amabel nodded, releasing a breath. "Okay. Let's train."

.:. QK .:.

The encounter with Amabel left Jody feeling strangely flat well into the evening, and not for the reasons one might've expected. She could care less about who Amabel's father was—in fact, she actively hoped he wasn't her father too—but what had really got to her and was still playing on her mind was Amabel's tirade about how unlikeable and angry she was. It resonated with her to an uncomfortable extent, but that wasn't all; it forced her to wonder, not for the first time, why on Earth a guy like Tyler liked a girl like her.

From the very beginning, Tyler had been a total laugh, and even though his pranks and inappropriate sense of humour had got on the others' nerves more often than not, they'd all genuinely liked him. Even Ryan liked him, which was a feat in and of itself, and who could blame him? Over the years, Tyler had grown into an outgoing and responsible young man with a heart of gold, always ready to help people, and always seeing the best in everyone, especially her, but what was she? She'd thought she was just like him, especially nice and helpful, but underneath it all, she was still the mean, scruffy little bundle of rage she'd been when she'd arrived at Elm Tree House. She hadn't changed at all, besides gaining half a dozen inches in height.

She smiled sadly as Tyler went on about something Piper had said down at the radio station, something well beyond her understanding. Whatever he was talking about had happened yesterday, and yet it was still on his mind.  _Piper_  was still on his mind.

Tyler hadn't lied to Jody when she'd last confronted him about Piper, at least not consciously, but she knew that the pair had a connection she would never understand. He probably didn't even know it yet, thinking he still liked her, but he would soon enough; feelings had a way of creeping up on people and taking them by complete surprise. That was what had happened to her, over two years ago, when Floss and the twins' teasing had got to her; before that, she'd never in her wildest dreams thought that she'd fall for her best friend, of all people.

But enough about her. Objectively speaking, Piper and Tyler made a better couple than he and Jody did. If nothing else, they just looked better together; Piper was tall, nearly as tall as Tyler, and therefore didn't look like a child next to him, and wasn't a plain Jane like Jody knew herself to be. Most importantly, Piper was far more confident in herself than Jody was ever going to be, meaning she'd be able to keep up with Tyler who was surely but steadily growing more and more self-assured by the day.

With bright eyes, Tyler suddenly started talking about his plans to spend the majority of Easter holidays, which were still two weeks away, at the radio station. Of course, he couldn't wait to spend more time with Piper. Jody sat there on his bed, forcing herself to maintain her smile as she wondered how much longer it would take for him to realise he was falling for another girl. She half-hoped it'd be soon so that she could get over it by the time the second school term began. Of course, the other half of her hoped never, but that was unrealistic.

Amabel had been right. Who would want a ball of rage, especially when they had a cool, calm and collected girl like Piper waiting in the wings?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I've returned to uni so update frequency may decrease a little bit. However, since I'm planning to finish this in 60 chapters, it really shouldn't matter. I'm bad at making promises but I do believe I'll have finished this fic by the end of the year, if not November.**


	49. Chapter 49

The day before Luke's twenty-second birthday, Jody went to his place bearing gifts. Or rather, just one gift, but one she was proud of because she'd made it with her own two hands. Unlike last time, she was let in straight away, by her brother himself, and the apartment seemed to be clean and in order. She nodded in approval as she stepped into the kitchen, more to herself than to him, before carefully putting the box containing the home-made cake down on the kitchen table.

"Oh, Jody, you didn't have to buy me a cake," he said, appearing to be almost embarrassed.

"I didn't," she answered, rubbing her hands together and jumping on the balls of her feet. "I  _made_  you a cake. I couldn't afford one, anyway."

Luke's eyes widened in either surprise or awe—she couldn't quite decipher which. In any case, he thanked her in a strangely gravelly voice before ushering her into the living room. She sunk into the armchair directly across from the small TV, shooting Luke a tense smile as he sat on the edge of the adjacent sofa; the atmosphere was welcoming enough but it was hard to relax when she knew the vile woman carrying her niece or nephew was likely in the bedroom just down the hall.

Speaking of her nephew or niece... "So, how's the baby?"

"Good, good," Luke replied, smiling more brightly than she'd seen him do so in a long time. "She's seventeen weeks along today."

"Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet?"

His smile faltered, and he shook his head. "She didn't want to find out, so..."

Irritation welled up in Jody, and she refrained from rolling her eyes. As always, the only thing that seemed to matter in this household was what Millie wanted, and as ever, Luke was happy to just sit down and take it. When was he going to grow a pair and stand up for himself? When his kid went off to uni?

"What about you?"

He looked startled, as if the thought had never crossed his mind. "What about me?"

"Don't you want to know if you're having a daughter or a son?"

"Of course I do."

"Then why didn't you find out when you had the chance?" she asked, crossing her arms. Who gave a hoot what Millie wanted? That baby was (hopefully) just as much Luke's as it was Millie's and he had a right to know the sex if he wanted to.

"Well, the sonographer did offer to put it into an envelope for me," he said, rubbing the stretch of skin behind his ear, "but I know Millie wouldn't have been happy with that. She'd feel like a fool if I knew and she didn't."

"Did she tell you that?"

"No, but I know her. I know what she likes and dislikes, and I don't want to hurt her when she's in such a delicate condition."

So Luke could apparently read Millie's mind now. Well, she'd heard stranger things. What she didn't understand was Millie. How could the woman be so insecure as to get hurt over something insignificant one second but then manage to push Luke around and dominate him the next? If she was that emotionally weak, Luke should've been able to wear the trousers in their relationship with ease. He really had to be a total doormat... There was no other explanation. At this rate, he'd have little to no say in his child's upbringing despite living in the same house as her or him; in all likelihood, he was destined to be nothing more than a financial crutch. Maybe Millie wouldn't even bother returning to work after the usual maternity leave.

She wrinkled her nose, not wanting to think about her brother's girlfriend any longer lest she lost control of her emotions and gave the 'delicate' bitch a piece of her mind. After all, she didn't want to risk hurting the baby. She'd have time enough to treat Millie the way she deserved later—eighteen long years, to be exact. She felt sick just thinking about it; she needed to change the subject.

"So, what are you doing for your birthday?" she asked, looking around the room. It was then that she noticed that the apartment wasn't decorated for a party. Odd. In the TV shows and movies, people Luke's age were always throwing mad house parties with plenty of booze and loud music.

"Nothing," Luke replied, stretching his arms. "It's just going to be a typical Sunday."

She raised an eyebrow. Her brother had always been on the shy side but had never passed up the chance to party with friends. Not before going off to uni and getting a personality transplant, anyway. "But why? Didn't you have a party last time?"

"Yeah. Millie threw me one at her parents' place, but she couldn't this time."

"What about your mates? The ones you were  _so_  close to in uni. Haven't they planned something?"

Luke pursed his lips. "I wouldn't expect them to. We've sort of drifted apart, lately."

Jody tried hard not to come out with 'I told you so', but she'd just known from the beginning that Luke's friendships with the swanky lot would never last. Friendships based on lies never did. If only Luke could get rid of his last remaining link to uni too, but who was she kidding? Millie would actually have to loosen the leash a little first, and that was something she would never do.

"Well, why don't you just do something with me instead?" she suggested. She couldn't throw a party fit for a man in his twenties but a lame night in was better than nothing. "I already made you a cake, so we can cut that, and maybe we can order in a couple of pizzas or something like we used to."

"We used to have such a laugh, didn't we?" Luke asked, before smiling small and looking down. "At least until Kingsley went and ruined it like he always does."

"Who's Kingsley?"

Jody turned her head so fast she got whiplash, looking right up into Millie's dangerously narrowed brown eyes. To say she was surprised was an understatement; she hadn't heard the bedroom door click open down the hallway, nor had she heard footfalls approaching the living room.

Millie continued her line of questioning, totally ignoring Jody's presence as usual. "Wait. Isn't Kingsley your father's name? Didn't he walk out when you were seven?"

"He did," Luke answered, trembling. Jody's eyes widened at his reaction.

"Well, then how did he manage to ruin pizza for you and your one-year-old sister?"

.:. QK .:.

Luke and Millie's conversation had, of course, escalated into an argument the moment the former admitted to having an older brother, and Jody had got to see with her own eyes just how badly Millie took Luke keeping secrets from her. For once in her life, she'd even sympathised with Millie; she couldn't believe Luke hadn't got 'round to telling his own girlfriend, the mother of his child, about such a significant detail of his life. It was then that she'd finally understood how Tyler must've felt when she'd kept her run-in with Gray from him for months.

Once Millie's voice had reached the point of screeching, however, Jody's sympathy had run out and she'd retreated to the bathroom. She could've just as easily told Luke she'd see him later before running back home but that would've been cruel. At least on his birthday (or rather the day before, because he was working on his actual birthday), Luke deserved to stare at a face other than his sadistic girlfriend's.

Before her (internet) search(es) for answers behind Amabel's plight, Jody had thought that there were only two types of abuse, which often went hand in hand with one another: physical and sexual. The discovery of verbal and emotional abuse had taken her by surprise, making her lose what little remaining faith she'd had in humanity. She should've known better because Denise had emotionally neglected her, which was a form of abuse in and of itself, but she hadn't. Perhaps she was just naive.

In any case, once she'd started reading about the signs of emotional and verbal abuse, especially in relationships, her eyes had been opened to the horrible reality of her brother's relationship. Millie wasn't just a woman with a mean streak, but an abuser; and Luke wasn't just a doormat, but a victim. Finally, Jody could say that Millie was a bad person as a matter of fact, not mere opinion, and others would agree with her. Well, every other person but Luke, who was too beaten down to see reason. Her only consolation was that he hadn't yet asked Millie to marry him. Hopefully, he never would.

The booming of Millie's voice abated as suddenly as it had begun, and Jody proceeded to unlock the bathroom door. As she stepped out into the hallway, Millie strode past her without so much as a glance in her direction. Regardless, Jody shot her (or rather her back) a nasty look before going to the living room, where Luke was still sitting in the same spot, rubbing his forehead.

"Do you wanna go out instead?" she asked from the doorway, alerting him to her presence. "I know I said we could order a pizza, but it always tastes better when you eat out."

That was a lie, of course; pizza was served best on a winter's day when the whole household was snuggled up on the sofas, wrapped in blankets and fluffy dressing gowns. But Luke needed some form of escapism in his life, especially since he was going to be tied down indefinitely in around five months, and this was going to have to be it.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem to be in the mood; he politely declined her offer, proceeding to stutter lame excuses as to why he couldn't go. She sighed, shaking her head. During the argument, had he been asked, or rather ordered, not to celebrate his birthday with her or something? Was that why Millie had walked into the living room in the first place? Somehow, the idea of Millie pressing her ear against the door and then deciding to intervene the second she heard something she didn't like didn't seem too far-fetched.

"Don't let her get you down, Luke," Jody said, placing her hands on her hips. "She doesn't own you." Luke released a deep breath, hanging his head in his hands. She blinked in concern. "What's wrong?"

He lifted his head, looking up at her with sad, red-rimmed eyes. "I just feel like I should be the one telling you this sort of stuff, not the other way around. I wish I was more like you."

She couldn't help but scoff. "Me?"

"Yeah, you. You know how to stand up for yourself, you don't care what anyone else thinks... I could do with a bit of that. Everyone could."

He was wrong. She did care what other people thought, just not what  _all_  people thought; she couldn't care less about the opinions of the cashier down at the corner shop or Jess and co. from the gym, but what Tyler, Mike, May-Li and her other friends thought of her mattered more than anything. She didn't deserve his praise. She felt almost embarrassed by it.

But he didn't seem to notice, his eyes downcast as he continued to voice his self-pity. They had that in common. "I'm in way over my head here. I'm nowhere near ready to be a dad."

Jody shifted awkwardly. If Luke was nowhere ready to be a dad, she was nowhere near ready to tell him that he was. She'd thought he was way too young for fatherhood right at the beginning but had kept that thought to herself to avoid causing upset. However, the uncomfortable parallels between their family and this new one hadn't escaped her; Millie was a blonde bitch like Denise, unfit to be a mother, and Luke was around the age Gray must've been at the time of Kingsley's birth. She couldn't see this family situation working out too well in the future.

Still, she couldn't just stand there like a lemon and say nothing. "You've still got five months to figure it out. Who knows where you'll be by then."

"I won't be doing a disappearing act, that's for sure," he said, straightening his back. "Whatever happens, I've got to be a part of this kid's life."

"Whatever happens?" she repeated, a sick sense of excitement surging through her. He sounded like he was on the verge of leaving the kid. Leaving Millie. "Are you leaving? Because if you are, it's abo—"

His eyes snapped back to hers, stopping her cold in her tracks. She promptly closed her mouth, and he opened his own. "I could never leave, Jodes. This baby needs me. No one's ever needed me before."

What about her? She'd needed him, once, but he hadn't been there. He hadn't even cared. Ironically, he'd been off ignoring her for people who didn't care about him, including Millie herself. " _Really_?"

"Yeah. Kids need their dads, and I never want to be like ours, you know? Proper dads don't just up and walk away from their kids, even if their relationship with the kids' mother sours."

"So it's just better to stay together and raise the kids in an unhappy home?" Like Amabel's parents? "You can't seriously think that.  _We're_  from an unhappy home, and not because  _he_  left Mum." Luke pressed his lips together in a thin line, but Jody continued, "You know, leaving doesn't have to mean walking away completely. You could still see your kid."

So, she didn't know anyone whose parents had split up and made the co-parenting thing work, but there had to be a success story out there somewhere, right? Whether Millie would cooperate long enough to achieve that was another matter entirely.

"He didn't leave her."

She was taken aback by his sudden interjection. "What?"

"Dad didn't leave Mum."

She stared at him as she fell into the armchair she'd occupied earlier. Millie's abuse had finally driven him mad. "Uhh, yes he did...?"

"No, he didn't," he insisted. "Dad did walk out but it was us he left, not her."

"What's that supposed to mean? If he left us, then he obviously left her. He didn't half-leave."

"No, Jody. To leave her, he would've actually had to have been with her in the first place."

"But he was. We"—she gestured towards him and then herself—"are proof. Well, at least you and Kingsley are. He's not on my birth certificate."

"Yeah, there's a reason for that."

Her ears perked up at this. She'd been humouring him thus far, but now he'd piqued her interest. "What?"

"He didn't want his name on it in case his wife found out."

Out of all the possible answers, she hadn't expected this one. Gray had had a wife at the time of her birth? How was that even possible? "I don't get it. Was he going through a divorce or something?" she asked, but then paused. "No... that doesn't make sense. He would've had to have been married before Kingsley was born..."

"He wasn't going through a divorce. He got married way after Kingsley was born. A couple of years after I was born, actually. I don't know how he managed to meet someone like her, much less marry her, but he did."

"Someone like her?"

"Well-off," he answered, and she couldn't help but blink in surprise. He quickly shook his head. "She wasn't rich, or anything, but she had more money than Mum and Dad both. Enough to easily support two people. He moved into the wife's house after the wedding."

"But you said he didn't leave Mum."

"He didn't. She's the one who told him to go and marry a woman with money so that he could give some of it to her. Benefits alone didn't cut it, I guess. Anyway, that's what he did. He took money from his wife and carried on with Mum behind her back. He was at ours whenever his wife went to work."

Jody's gut churned as she realised her entire life had been a lie. Denise hadn't been the victim of her partner's infidelity with another woman like she'd always made herself out to be. In fact, she was the other woman, sleeping with a married man, and Jody was the product of that dirty affair. She couldn't believe she'd actually felt sorry for her mother. She should've known better than to think Denise Jackson could ever be a victim of anything.

"So Mum was his mistress?" she asked, feeling sick to the stomach. "And that's why she called me an accident? Because I was never meant to be born?"

"Yeah, but I'm sure we were all accidents, especially Kingsley. Why else would two twenty-somethings who can barely feed themselves ever have a kid?"

She gave him a pointed look, and his eyes widened in a sheepish manner. She shook her head in amusement. "So why did he leave in the end? You said he left us, not her. Did he get tired of us? Of being a dad?"

"You could say that," he said, nodding. "He had another  _accident_  the year after you were born, only this time, it was his wife who got pregnant. Mum was so pissed off. I still remember hiding behind the door when she told him to, and I quote, 'fuck right off'. It was the last time I saw him."

Well, that ruled out Amabel who was seven months younger than her at most. Then again, she'd known for quite some time now that Amabel wasn't her sister. She couldn't pinpoint the exact moment she'd figured it out, but she was glad all the same; she didn't want an abusive father. But she didn't much like the sound of the one she'd once had either.

"How do you know all this, anyway?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. "You were too young to know about cheating and all that. And it's not like Mum would've told you when you got older."

"You're right; she wouldn't have. Kingsley's the one who told me. Unlike us, he was old enough at the time to understand what was going on."

That didn't sound right. "He was ten. And since when did you start believing what he says? He's a liar, like Mum. How do you know he was telling the truth?"

"Oh, he's a liar alright," he agreed wryly, "but I believe him about this one. It adds up with what I remember. Anyway, he was kind of drunk when he told me. Drunk people don't lie."

Drunk people didn't remember details all too well either, but it wasn't as if she was ever going to ask Gray for his side of the story. She could either take Kingsley's story or leave it, and was inclined towards the former, even though it meant that Denise had lied to her about her father until the very end. Something still didn't quite add up, though.

"How come Mum didn't go after him for child support? She loved money."

Luke furrowed his eyebrows. "She did. I'm pretty sure she took him to court for me and Kingsley."

Jody blinked slowly. "But not for me?"

"She couldn't have, could she? His name's not on your birth certificate."

"She could've forced him to get a paternity test."

He shrugged. "Maybe she couldn't be bothered. He did move away from Birmingham pretty quickly." He cleared his throat, slapping his hands down on his thighs. "I think we should go and grab a pizza, after all. I'm hungry. I'll just go and tell Millie."

She nodded, watching him literally flee the room. She was no fool. He knew why their mother hadn't fought to get Gray's name on her birth certificate and, deep down, so did she.

Who was she?

Jackson?

Gray?

Or something else entirely?


	50. Chapter 50

Jody's eyes abruptly snapped open as an impending sense of doom washed over her. Sitting up and throwing the duvet off her body, she glanced at the clock to see that it was seven o'clock on the dot, far too early to be awake on a Saturday. When she thought about lying back down and going to sleep, however, she couldn't bring herself to do it; her restlessness wouldn't let her. So she didn't. Instead, she sat there in silence, wondering if she should start studying early, when she heard movement down the hallway, near the stairs. Maybe she wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep; exam season was upon them, and four, including her, were directly affected.

Knowing she wasn't going to get back to sleep anytime soon, she leapt out of bed and donned her new purple dressing gown before quietly opening her bedroom door and sneaking out. As she carefully descended the stairs, so as not to step on the creak-inducing spots, she saw Chloe wheeling into the kitchen. She followed, walking into the kitchen to see Mike standing by the fridge, handing something to Ryan who looked just about ready to go off on an expedition: he had a backpack slung over one shoulder, a duffel bag over the other, and another lying at his feet. He quickly noticed her, followed by Chloe and then Mike, who looked back at him in concern.

"Early morning, Jodes?" he said before nodding at Mike. Jody side-stepped, letting Mike pass, and Chloe wheeled into the lounge, leaving her alone with her longtime frenemy.

As she approached the breakfast bar, her slow morning brain finally caught up with her body. "You're leaving? I thought things didn't work out with Maureen."

Maureen was the foster carer who'd visited last week with the intention to foster both Ryan and Chloe, but things had quickly gone downhill when their mother had shown up on the same day, demanding to speak to Chloe. Ryan had then gone off somewhere with his mother, and although no one knew what'd happened during that time, he'd returned without her, looking like someone who'd just been cleared of cancer.

"They didn't," he answered. "I'm going to a semi-independent flat near the constabulary. I'll be sixteen in a few days so they're finally going to start paying me."

She raised an eyebrow. "Right before exams, though? And what about Chloe?"

"My exams don't start until next week. I'll be settled by then. And I'm leaving Chloe to you lot. She's not the kid she was when she came here to be with me, and she deserves a life where she's not always worrying about me and my problems. She can handle life without me now."

"Do you actually believe that?" she asked, noticing that he was frowning slightly.

"I'm her older brother, so I'm always going to be a little worried about her. But yeah, I do, because I know she's not like me. She's always fitted in here."

"Because she's always been nice, Ryan. She's never put us down or tried to ruin our lives. Well, except that one time, but I'm sure that was down to you as well."

He nodded and squared his shoulders, as if to say 'that's fair', before releasing a deep breath. "Look, I've done a tonne of things I'm ashamed of, for reasons I don't really want to get into, but believe me when I say that I'm determined to change. No more scheming; no more lies."

She sighed. She'd heard this before, and not just from him, but it was always a lie. Always. "But that's just it. I did believe you, back at Mike's wedding, but then you went and told me I was  _nothing_  only a couple of months later. You just can't help yourself."

"I know, and I'm sorry, but I mean it this time. You'll see."

"When?"

"Honestly?" he asked. She nodded. "I don't know. I've got a lot to work out first. I mean, this isn't a fairytale, is it? I'm not going to change overnight."

"I wouldn't expect you to. Even The Beast took a while to turn back into Prince Adam."

That drew a smile from him, one so genuine that she almost pinched herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. He didn't seem to sense her shock, however, reaching down to grab his other duffel bag. He looked back up at her, still smiling. "You know, if there's ever anything I can do for you, just text me. Maybe then we'll be even."

"Is that even possible?"

"Of course it is. If there's anyone I'm ever going to be even with, it's you. I knew that when you got me back for posting your hate mail to your mum. You're the only person to have done that, you know?"

"Done what?" she asked, blinking. He really wasn't doing himself any favours by reminding her of the letter incident; memories of Luke as he used to be, pre-Millie and pre-uni, were too painful to dwell on or even think about.

"Defeat me. Others tried, and Tee got close, but no one turned the tables on me like you did. I never saw it coming: you getting your brother to nick the letter."

"Thanks, I guess?" she said, crossing her arms. She was flattered, but tried not to show it; Ryan wasn't out of hot water with her just yet. "I'm still not sure that I can believe you, though."

His smile vanished in an instant. "Well, I can't make you believe something. Just... think about it. That's all I can say."

"Alright. I can do that. And I'll look out for Chloe too."

As if on cue, Chloe wheeled into the kitchen just then, telling Ryan that his taxi had arrived.

Jody looked to him, feeling strangely empty. "I guess this is it. I'll see you at school, then?"

"Probably," he said, before walking out into the lobby.

Chloe trailed behind him, but Jody hung back, leaning on the breakfast bar. This time last year, she'd thought she'd be one of three residents sitting her GCSEs; now, she was the only one left.

.:. QK .:.

The feeling of foreboding persisted well into the next day, such that Jody was still restless by the time she stepped foot in the gym, despite having had a relatively good night of sleep. The only explanation she'd been able to come up with was that she, more anxious than eager to get good grades, was suffering from exam-stress, a situation that could easily be remedied by a good work-out, preferably with Amabel. So, after carelessly stowing her things away in a locker, she ran into the main gymnasium, only to find that Amabel wasn't there and that there was a small crowd forming in front of the noticeboard. Figuring that her sparring partner was in the toilets, she decided to go over to their usual training spot and wait for her when she noticed that Brandon was at the back of the crowd to her right. If he was interested in whatever the rest of them were looking at, it had to be worthwhile.

"What are you all looking at?" she asked, approaching him. She didn't bother to tiptoe and peer over the others' heads; he was tall enough for the both of them.

He turned his head to her, but didn't answer; not out of rudeness, but because he didn't seem to be able to. A knot formed in her throat as she took in the distraught expression on his face because he rarely had reason to look anything other than happy. She looked around, wondering why Amabel wasn't back yet. It wasn't as if she had exams to be studying for; Year Tens didn't sit exams.

"Ugh, whatever!" Jess exclaimed, walking out of the crowd with Emily. "What? Am I meant to feel sorry for her?"

Emily winced, her face pale white. "It just seems a little harsh, Jess. Imagine what her..." Her voice quietened, travelling out of Jody's earshot.

A few more of Jess' group left the fray, the expressions on their faces ranging from indifference to guilt, and a clear line of vision opened up right in front of Jody, revealing a basic sheet of paper reading 'With deep grief'. She couldn't read the rest because of the various heads and shoulders in front of her, but being as petite and lithe as she was, she squeezed in between the couple in front of her, breaking their hand-holding, and pushed right in front of them. Once she read the notice in its entirety, however, she immediately wished she hadn't.

'With deep grief, we announce the passing of Amabel Grey. 13th December 2003–10th May 2019.' She stood there for a while, trying and failing to tear her eyes away from the notice. Amabel had never been a Gray in the first place, a revelation that didn't shock her as much as it would've done a few weeks ago, but what really twisted the knife in was the fact that Amabel had died yesterday, on a Saturday, the one day of the week that Jody did not attend the gym. It felt like a sick joke.

"I just saw her on Friday," she told Brandon, the only other person still standing with her; the others had since dispersed. "She didn't"—her voice cracked—"look like she was dying.  _God_ , when did this even happen?" In the morning, while she'd been talking to Ryan? Before? After? In the night, even?

"After she left yesterday," he replied quietly.

Her head snapped towards his. "She was in yesterday?"

"Yeah. She left in tears."

"In tears?" she asked, her stomach clenching. "Why?"

"I don't know but I'm sure it had something to do with her parents. They came in yesterday, and she looked really surprised and worried, like she didn't want them there, but went into Bernadette's office with them anyway. I don't know what went on in there but after like ten minutes she came out crying and her parents looked pissed. Really pissed. They dragged her out after that."

Jody's eyes watered up. No one had to tell her that Amabel had been crying because her deception had been uncovered or that Amabel's death hadn't been brought about by nature. Only a superhuman would've been able to bear the pressure that Amabel's parents had put on her, and she, a girl of barely fifteen, had finally had enough. It was always going to happen, it had just been a matter of when. To think that Amabel had been alive less than twenty-four hours ago.

"I'm sorry, Jody," Brandon said, placing a comforting arm around her. "I know how close you two were."

She stifled a sob at that, closing her eyes in shame; she had indeed been close to Amabel, close enough to know that the Grey family had been destroying her, but hadn't lifted a finger to help. Instead, she'd washed her hands of the girl, thinking her weak and not worthy of her efforts, and had then rejoiced at not being related to her. What did that say about her?

.:. QK .:.

That afternoon, Jody lay on her stomach in bed, her revision guides and exercise books lying open and forgotten on her desk. She had two exams in the upcoming week yet couldn't bring herself to focus on studying for either; Amabel was never far from her mind, haunting her for not caring. A part of her didn't even want to study; why should she get good grades when Amabel, who'd had her entire life in front of her, had been forever robbed of the chance to do so?

"Jody!" Taz called from somewhere in the hallway. "Tyler's here!"

She sat up with a start, rubbing her bleary eyes. Tyler had texted her a couple of times to ask if she was going over to his after gym to study for the English exam, but she hadn't replied at the time because her mind had been all over the place and had then forgotten to altogether. So now she was a bad best friend too, in addition to being a bad person. How had she fallen so low?

"Tell him I'm not feeling well!" she called back, regardless. She couldn't let him see her like this, with her hair sticking up at all angles and dark bags under her eyes. Piper probably never let herself look so ridiculous, even on a bad day.

Taz didn't respond but Jody heard light footfalls down the hallway, so she relaxed and flopped back down on her bed, confident that the younger girl would relay her message. About ten seconds later, however, she heard much heavier footfalls coming up the hallway and chucked the hood of her tracksuit top over her head just in time.

"What are you doing?!" she exclaimed as the door swung open, her voice sounding horrifically whiny. "You know you're not allowed up here!"

Tyler closed the door behind him, looking her up and down. "I don't care. I'm here to talk to you, so that's what I'm going to do."

Jody shrunk further into herself, hyperaware of how crap she looked. And he looked so good today. It wasn't fair. "I don't want to talk! I've got to study! Please get out! Everyone's going to think we're—"

"Having sex?" he interrupted. "Good! That means they won't come up here and disturb us!"

She blushed, mortified. It wasn't like him to talk so... brazenly... especially about relationship stuff. Hell, 'sex' was a word they hadn't said to each other since the time they used to giggle together about sex-ed classes, not even when his mum had thought she was pregnant with his kid. Inadvertently, she was reminded of the scene she'd walked in on two months ago in the gymnasium toilets. Unfortunately, she also recalled what'd happened right after, and her vision became blurry as the image of Amabel's tear-streaked face swam in front of her eyes.

"Jody? Oh shit! I didn't mean to make you upset. I'm sure they don't ac—"

"No, no, it's not that!" she choked, hastily wiping at her eyes. She hadn't even realised she was crying until he'd started panicking. It was embarrassing; shedding tears in front of him made her feel like a small child, not his girlfriend.

"Well, what's wrong then?" he asked, and she felt the mattress dip next to her. "Are you worried about exams? Luke? The baby?"

"Yeah, I am, but it's something else... I found out today that Amabel died last night. She killed herself."

"What?! Why?"

"Her parents found out she wasn't on the team and got really angry. I told you about all the pressure they put on her, right?" He nodded. "I guess she couldn't take it anymore."

He shifted closer to her, taking hold of one of her hands. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Jodes. I know she turned out to not be your sister but you two became friends in the end, didn't you?"

Sniffing, she vehemently shook her head. "Don't say that! I wasn't her friend. A friend would've helped her... I just let her die."

"How did she want you to help her? Tell Mike and May-Li?"

"She didn't want me to help at all. She actually told me to stay out of it, out of her business. She didn't want the social knocking on her door."

"It's not your fault then. Why are you beating yourself up about it?"

She brought her eyes up to meet his. "It  _is_  my fault. I shouldn't have listened to her. She was just a kid; she didn't know any better. But I did. She told me that her parents would never speak to her again if they found out she didn't make the team. That's probably exactly what they did, and it's probably what pushed her over the edge. I could've stopped this."

"Hold on," he said, turning towards her a little more. "If her parents are this bad, how do you know it wasn't one or both of them who killed her? Why are you so sure that she killed herself?"

To be honest, the possibility had crossed her mind, but she'd quickly dismissed it. The worst Amabel's parents would've done to her for not making the team was stop her from coming to the gym. She'd still had GCSEs, A levels and uni ahead of her; they would've needed her alive for bragging rights if nothing else.

"That's not the point, Tyler."

"Then what is?"

"I could've gone up to Mike or May-Li, or even Shona, and raised the alarm at any time but I didn't. And not because Amabel told me not to. It's because I didn't care. I was only interested in helping her when I thought she was my sister; after I realised she wasn't, I couldn't be bothered anymore. I'm just selfish." Tyler whistled. Jody gave him an irritated look, despite the serious expression on his face; he wasn't making light of the situation, surely, but what was he trying to get at? " _What_?"

He blew out his cheeks, before saying, "I just think you're being way too hard on yourself. You're not selfish. You help people out when they ask for it—you always have done—and you did your best for Amabel, too. You respected her wishes. I mean, if she really didn't want the social getting involved, you do realise she could've ended up doing what she did even if you had raised the alarm?"

She released a shaky breath, pulling her hand out of his grip, and pretended not to notice the hurt look on his face as she turned away from him. "You don't get it. I'm a bad person, Tyler, just like my mum and my maybe-dad. When the only decent person in my family admitted that he was gonna be a dad, I wasn't happy for him. Far from it. I was actually upset that there probably wasn't going to be a miscarriage. Yeah. I basically wished death on my own brother's child just because I don't like his or her mum." She sighed. "I'm always gonna be a Jackson... Even if I am a Gray, it doesn't mean shit; it just makes me the daughter of two cheaters instead of one."

"We're not our parents, Jody. We're our own people."

"That's easy to say when your dad could be any randomer on the street because your own mum doesn't even know who he is!"

An awkward silence followed as Jody both processed what she'd said and tried to figure out how to take it back. She soon realised she couldn't, though, because she hadn't said something that was incorrect so much as something that no civilised person would ever say out loud.


	51. Chapter 51

Jody collapsed on Tyler's bed face first, letting out a tired sigh. It was funny, really, how she could get through numerous spars without breaking a sweat but feel totally knackered after a few exams. As it happened, they were over for the week but as the common saying went, there was no rest for the wicked; she had to start revising, or rather cramming, for next week's exams as soon as possible, including maths, her weakest subject.

"Can I get someone else to sit the maths exam for me?" she asked Tyler, who'd followed her into his room. "All of them, actually."

The mattress dipped somewhere near her. "I wish, but we can't give up already. This was only the first week."

"Ugh, don't remind me!"

"These few weeks are gonna be a grind. Mum told me I have to study more on the weekends but, of course, she still wants me to help Kamal on Sundays, so that means I'm going to have to cut back on going to the radio station. Once a fortnight, she said. Can you believe it?"

Despite knowing it was selfish and petty, a rush of satisfaction went through her; Tyler would only be seeing Piper twice during the exam season, rather than the usual four or five times a month. She'd get to spend those Saturdays he usually spent with Piper with him, even if all they ended up doing with that time was study. How could she bring herself to feel bad about that?

"Well, what's more important? Your grades or the radio station?"

He answered without hesitation: "My grades."

She smiled to herself. "Well, there you go."

"But I love being down at the station. I don't know if I can stay away from there any more than you can stay away from the gym."

Her smile faltered, and not just because Tyler had made his desire to be around Piper so obvious. Simply put, her enthusiasm for going to the gym had waned. She still loved boxing, of course, which was why she forced herself to go in and do the bare minimum training, but something inside her died each time she passed her and Amabel's usual spot or made a mistake Amabel used to tease her for. She didn't know how much more of it she could take; she often felt like she was going to explode.

"How are you holding up?" Tyler asked, drawing her from her thoughts. "You've barely had time to think since exams started."

"It's hard getting used to a new sparring partner. I mean, I've only been to the gym twice this week because of Mike and May-Li's nagging but I already feel like it's not going to work out with this girl. She doesn't get me."

Not like Amabel did, or had. Sure, she'd been difficult to get to know as a person, more than difficult, really, but as boxers, she and Jody had just clicked from their very first spar. They'd been boxing soulmates, for lack of a better word, always bringing out the best in each other and pushing each other to improve, which was probably why Jody had, beyond all reason, been so sure that they were sisters. She was never going to have that again.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it. You're not still blaming yourself, are you?" She thinned her lips, knowing he wouldn't like her answer. "Jody, mental illness is hard to spot. Take it from me; I had no idea there was anything wrong with my mum until she wouldn't get out of bed one day."

She rolled on her back, looking up at him. "But you were only five. I'm ten years older than that—eleven, really—and I never even stopped to think that something like this could happen."

"Because people our age don't think about things like that. That's a job for the grown-ups."

"Who I should've told everything when I had the chance."

Sighing, he stood up and walked towards his chest of drawers. "Hold out your hand."

She blinked in confusion but sat up and complied, watching on as he closed the top drawer before taking a step in her direction and placing a small, cool object into her outstretched palm. Upon closer inspection, she realised it was a necklace: a basic silver chain looped through a silver heart-shaped pendant. Just her kind of thing, but not something she'd expected to receive from him.

"What's this for?" she asked as he sat back down next to her. Her birthday was still months away; even he hadn't turned sixteen yet. Was this for Piper? Surely he couldn't be so insensitive as to show her a gift he'd got for another girl without first telling her that he was leaving her for said girl?

"It's not for anything. It's just something I got from town last week. Right after I visited you, actually. Mum sent me to run errands for her but I was still thinking about you—about what you said—when I saw this. I thought why not? It's a nice way to remind you of who you are."

"A girl who likes jewellery...?" He smiled, shaking his head, before leaning in and turning the pendant over to reveal a capital letter 'J' in the centre of the other side of the heart. She stared at it, feeling blood rush to her ears. "Who I am? So J for Jackson?"

"No. J for Jody. Just Jody."

She bristled. " _Just Jody_? You know that's what Ryan called me before the trials?"

"Yeah, but I don't see that as a bad thing. I've never saw you as a Jackson or a Gray in the first place. You've always been just Jody to me: the wild girl who bit me on her first day in care, but then quickly became my friend, and then best friend. You know, surnames don't actually mean anything; we only need them because of official papers and stuff. I wish you could see that."

In all honesty, she didn't know what to say. She  _knew_ he was right, that surnames had only started being used regularly less than a thousand years ago, but also knew that even before that, perhaps since the beginning of humanity, young women used to be referred to as so and so's daughter; she was still missing out on something by not having that, even more so now that she knew her own mother had been unsure of her paternity.

"I'm sorry," she said, lifting her gaze from the pendant to meet his. "I shouldn't have said all that crap last week. My mum didn't know who my dad was any more than your mum knows yours. My mum's actually worse because she was kind of in a relationship when I was born."

He shook his head again. "Don't worry about it. You weren't exactly wrong anyway; I don't know my dad and I never will, but I don't care either way. I've already got a family."

She nodded, though she didn't know whether he was referring to Sally and Kamal or the DG lot. Perhaps both. "So have I, I guess... Luke used to be all I needed before he started ignoring me."

Well, that wasn't strictly true, because, during that time, she'd been desperate to maintain a good relationship with her other brother too, but she knew better by now. Maybe she ought to steer clear of men named Kingsley in general, whether they be her brother or father.

"Maybe he still is."

"Maybe."

Something occurred to her just then. Just as Luke was her only family left, she was his only family left, and with their father absent, their brother incarcerated, and his friends distant, she was his only real support when it came to Millie and the child. For the first time,  _he_  needed  _her_ , perhaps more than she'd ever needed him, and considering Amabel's fate, leaving him alone with only Millie for company, for an extended period of time, was potentially catastrophic. She needed to see him again soon, undoubtedly, but when? As long as she still had exams to sit, she'd have to spend all of her free time, including weekends, to revise and keep up with her training.

"So..." Tyler suddenly said, "did you hear about Bill's promposal?"

 _Prom_. That was it. "Err, yeah. Only he would ask someone who's already got a boyfriend to prom... It's on the Saturday after exams finish, right?"

"Yeah, the 22nd. Some girls are already complaining that there's no time to buy a dress before that."

She scoffed. It was hardly a tragedy; Grant had bought her a prom dress in  _one_  day. "Well, it's a good thing I'm not going then."

He looked surprised. "You're not?" he asked, his voice somewhat high. "Why?"

"Cos I've got to go and see Luke. Millie'll be six months along by then. It seems like a good time."

"Yeah, but you could go the day after, couldn't you?"

A day had been all it took for her to lose Amabel forever, too. "I could, but I just want it to be as soon as possible. I won't be able to see him for ages as it is."

He tipped his head to the side before nodding but regarded her in a subdued manner; he almost looked like he wanted to say something, or at least had wanted to. Looking down at her hand, at the pendant necklace, she quickly realised that she hadn't even said thanks. No wonder he was staring.

"Thanks for this," she said, running her finger over the 'J'. "I love it."

"You're welcome. I remembered what you said about liking the simple stuff."

She couldn't help but feel touched. Denise had never bothered to learn what she liked let alone keep it in mind while getting her something. This, though? This was perfect. It wasn't some horrendous rocky thing, and it actually meant something.

 _Just Jody_. Somehow, it didn't sound so bad anymore.


End file.
